OK, I'm in IT, but when it come to video cards, I haven't a clue as to what model to purchase. I have a Matrox G450 at present and want a good replacement. I hear the Sapphire Radeon at about £150.00 is excellent, but all these different chipsets 5200, 9200, 9800, etc, etc. I also understand a new bread of cards are imminent, or even available now. I'm really after something that will allow me to play games for a while yet.

Cheers

Mark

 

The next gen ATI cards are the Radeon X800 Pro and X800 XT. The Pro's are shipping but you'll be paying £250+VAT ish. No doubt cheaper versions will be out at some point though.

A good choice at present is a card using the Radeon 9800 Pro. 128MB cards are down to around £120 / £130 + VAT - they were around £250 November last year!

Nvidia have the new GeForce 6800 - they start at around £190+VAT on pre-order. Of shipping cards, the GeForce 5900XT is possibly the best choice at approx £125+VAT.

Peformance of X800 and 6800 looks staggering but you're paying for the latest and greatest...

HTH,

Chris.

 

Best value for power is the ATI 9800 Pro at about £113 + vat (overclockers). NOthing struggles to run with this, even at high res with everything switched on. And it can be overclocked to XT speeds.