Introduction

With all the focus on high end video cards you might start believing we are living among millionaires. Unfortunately it’s not quite true, while it’s cool to see how fast the latest gear can make games run, in the end most people will go for the more reasonably priced products out there.

The focus of this roundup is to help you make an educated decision on your next purchase, with a semi-filled wallet we try to find the best bang for the buck mid-range PCIe video card.



With High-End products priced between $300-600, you should be able to pick up a good mid-range card between $100-200, we’ve included the following VGA cards in our test (prices mentioned are from the time of writing this roundup)

Asus X1300 Pro Silent 256Mb	~$100
The cheapest card in our roundup, the X1300 series is borderline low-range with a price tag of ~$100. This Asus model features passive cooling which is a plus.
Sparkle 6600 GT 128Mb	~$110
nVidia's mid-range video card which preceded the 7600GT can now be had for ~$110
Powercolor X800GTO 128Mb	~$120
This previous generation video card from ATI can now be found for $110-130 if you shop around a bit.
Asus X1600 XT Silent 256Mb	~$170
The X1600XT can be found for ~$150, this particular Asus model with passive cooling costs just a bit more at ~$170.
eVGA 7600GT CO 256Mb	~$180
Pricing on a the new mid-range card from nVidia starts at ~$180.
Club 3D X1800 GTO 256Mb	~$200
The X1800GTO based VGA cards were originally priced at ~$250 but ATI recently announced a nice price drop, and this card can now be found for ~$200.
eVGA 7600GT CO SC 256Mb	~$210
The Super Clocked version from eVGA is approximately ~$30 more expensive, but does come with a quite noticeable speed bump in the GPU/Memory department.

Test Setup

Piotke's Test Setup
CPU	AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Mainboard	MSI K8N SLI
Memory	2*512MBDDR PC3200
Video	A lot :)
Other	Seagate 7200.7 120 GB

Before we delve into benchmarking, let’s have a look at the specifications from the different VGA cards ->

Specifications

All the video cards match their reference clock speeds except for the e-VGA products which come overclocked out of the box.

	Build Process	Core Clock	Memory Speed	Onboard Memory	Memory Bus	Pixel/Vertex Pipelines
Asus X1300 Pro Silent	90nm	600Mhz	800Mhz	256Mb GDDR2	128 bit	4/2
Asus X1600 XT Silent	90nm	590Mhz	1380Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	128 bit	12/5
Powercolor X800GTO	90nm	400Mhz	700Mhz	128Mb GDDR3	256 bit	12/6
Sparkle 6600GT	110nm	500Mhz	1000Mhz	128Mb GDDR3	128 bit	8/3
Club 3D X1800 GTO	90nm	500Mhz	1000Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	256 bit	12/8
nVidia Reference 7600GT	90nm	560Mhz	1400Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	128 bit	12/5
eVGA 7600GT CO	90nm	580Mhz	1500Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	128 bit	12/5
eVGA 7600GT CO SC	90nm	600Mhz	1560Mhz	256Mb GDDR3	128 bit	12/5

Features / In the Box

In the table below you can easily see what card has what video in/out features, if it requires extra power connector, what games/software you get inside the box, and also how loud the stock cooler is at different speeds (if supported). The noise was recorded at a 45° angle from the rear of the card at ~30cm, graphics card is installed on an open test bench, the ambient noise in the room was ~37dBA.

	DVI/VGA?	Video-Out?	Video-In?	External Power?	Noise@30cm	Included Software
Asus X1300 Pro Silent	1xDVI/1xVGA	S-Video Composite	No	No	passive cooling	King Kong SE
Asus X1600 XT Silent	1xDVI/1xVGA	S-Video Composite	S-Video Composite	No	passive cooling	Savage Xpand Rally BillyBlade Mashed
Powercolor X800GTO	1xDVI/1xVGA	S-Video Composite	No	No	50.6dBA	PowerDVD
Sparkle 6600GT	1xDVI/1xVGA	S-Video Composite	No	No	50.7dBA
Club 3D X1800 GTO	2xDVI	S-Video Composite	S-Video Composite	6-Pin	H: 60.7dBA M: 49dBA L: 41.5dBA	Cyberlink Powerpack Colin McRae 2005 WWF Panda Game
eVGA 7600GT CO	2xDVI	S-Video Composite	No	No	H: 58.2dBA L: 46.5dBA
eVGA 7600GT CO SC	2xDVI	S-Video Composite	No	No	H: 60.8dBA L: 46.9dBA

$100-120 Gets you this:

Asus X1300 Pro Silent



The ATI X1300 Pro is quite low end, however that doesn’t mean it’s no good, the Asus SILENT version is ideal for the home theater PC, complete with passive cooling by use of heat pipes and a nifty swing open heatsink:



The Asus X1300 Pro Silent comes with the bare essentials, a DVI to D-Sub connector and an S-Video to Composite cable.



Installed the backside of the heatsink clips open and sits quite close to the CPU socket area

Powercolor X800GTO



This card from Powercolor is based on the X800 series GPU from ATI which is last generation tech, the GTO has less pipelines and slower clock speeds but is also considerably less pricey, fitting into the low-end range.

In the box you find a DVI->VGA connector, drivers CD and Cyberlink software to view/create/author DVDs. The card doesn’t feature GPU monitor support, and the fan speed is fixed at full speed at all times, so it’s not the most silent solution out there.

Sparkle 6600GT

I bought this card from eBay, two of them in fact, for an interesting price, new these 6600GT based nVidia cards can be found for ~€100. It’s a last generation mid-range product which has now come down in price to fit to low-range category.

The Sparkle 6600GT is based of the reference design from nVidia, using the reference cooler, which seems to run at full speed at all times too, whether in 2D mode or 3D.




Let’s take a closer look at the mid-range products in this roundup ->

Call of Duty 2
Official Website

The sequel of Call of Duty was released last year and features a whole new graphics engine which really put you in the middle of a war zone in all its terrifying glory. The gameplay is more newbie friendly with the auto-healing and easier to kill enemies, nevertheless with the difficulty cranked up you’ll have many auto-spawning foes to kill.

In the movie below I’m in Bergstein, Germany, ordered to secure the village, it involves close quarter combat, long range sniping and setting up a smoke screen (this effect is very nicely rendered).


Hit Play-Button to see the manual runthrough.

Head to Head

Let’s start out with the low-end cards; at 1024x768 they already struggle to keep the frame rate up, the X800GTO comes out best and the game is actually quite playable with this card. The 6600GT is a close second, the game is unplayable at this resolution with the X1300 Pro.



Increasing the image quality a bit by adding 8x Anisotropic Filtering brings down the FPS for the low end cards, but the mid-range is able to deliver fluent gameplay here:



Quite a surprise to see the X1600XT score so low, almost on par with the X1300 Pro. The 6600GT and X800GTO are a tad too slow at this setting; you’ll need the X1800GTO the get fluent gameplay. The 7600GT is cruising through the game at 35+FPS.

A last bump in resolution makes the game unplayable on most cards:



At 1280x1024 8xAF the game is doable on the 7600GT, the X1800GTO simply can’t keep up here.

Squiggly lines chart

The aging NV6600GT is really holding up well compared to the X1300Pro



The X1800GTO, while being priced on par with the 7600GT, is not able to keep up the pace

Oblivion
Official Website

Oblivion is the sequel to the popular role playing game Morrowind. The graphics engine has been completely revamped and makes it one of the best looking games out there at the moment, if your hardware is up to the task. This game is very taxing on both your CPU as well as your graphics card, only with extremely high end hardware (SLI/Crossfire high end card) you can play the game at high quality settings and detail at higher resolutions.

The outdoor scenes are most taxing and that’s where I’ll compare to the performance, I descend a hill next to the water, killing a wolf and a creepy looking crab.


Hit Play-Button to see the manual runthrough.

I only tested at 1024x768, because even at this resolution the performance is less than stellar, if you want to have a good balance of game immersion and playable frame rates you’ll have to play around a bit with the graphics settings in-game. I set the viewing distance quite high because otherwise you’ll be staring into grey smoke most of the time. This does put a lot of extra strain on the graphics card and will the game more sluggish.

While the game is played from a first person perspective and battles are done in real time (not turn based as some other RPG’s) the FPS doesn’t have to be 60FPS to make the game playable. Even at 20-30FPS the game is quite enjoyable.

Head to Head

The first test is with Bloom enabled, all cards support this rendering mode, and it’s the ideal choice for the less powerful systems out there. Lighting is not as spectacular compared to HDR, but you get a boost in FPS.



The X1300 Pro is really struggling to no surprise, while the other cards make a good showing, the X1600XT does better here than it did in Call of Duty 2 and is ahead of the 6600GT and X800GTO. The X1800GTO is again trailing the 7600GT, will this be a trend?

Enabling HDR was possible on all cards except the X800GTO which doesn’t support Smart Shader 3.0, which is required for HDR in Oblivion.



The 7600GT holds up quite well, while the other cards show a ~10FPS dip.

Squiggly lines chart

While the X1800GTO is a generation ahead of the 6600GT, it doesn’t seem to outrun the low-end cards by much:

Colin McRae 2005
Official Website

This rally race game series is quite popular, receiving an update about every other year; The 2005 version has a quite realistic car damage model and good overall graphics. While not quite next generation they serve to purpose of a speedy race game.

Racing games are not my specialty; it took me a while before I could get through the test stage without crashing every other corner. The gameplay movie below still contains some random crashes; I’m not perfect you know ;-)


Hit Play-Button to see the manual runthrough.

Performance was quite good with all cards at 1024x768 even with 8xAF enabled:




Battlefield 2
Official Website

Battlefield 2 is a large multiplayer game which also features a few skirmish missions where you fight the computer AI. It has a very scalable graphics engine but it’s known to be a resource hog. The guys over at Guru3D made a scripted demo play which takes the player over a large section of one of the maps on foot, boat and in a jeep.


Hit Play-Button to see the runthrough.

The fast pace of the game and large surrounds require higher frame rates in order for you not to get sea-sick in front of your PC, at 30FPS the game is do-able during the slower moments (driving a jeep, in a boat) but once you into battle this lower frame rate will prove insufficient and will cause you to miss your target because the game stops being fluent.



At 1024x768 8xAF all cards are able to provide enough raw GFX power to run the game fluent, without activity on the screen. Once you throw in a few dozen player models those cards with <60 fps results will struggle.



The X800GTO falls behind the X1600XT here, but not by much, the X1800GTO is again trailing the 7600GT.

FEAR
Official Website

FEAR is a game which relies on its excellent enemy AI to deliver an enjoyable experience, the in-game graphics are far from bad, with a nice slow-motion (matrix style) effect which does add to the game play overall. However the maps are quite dull (office buildings) with very monotone colors. The character models are highly detailed with high resolution textures and they look great – there’s also a very convincing lighting engine which casts shadows correctly to create the desired atmosphere of “FEAR”.

In the movie below I’m playing through a short section of the game where you descend the stairs, taking out hostiles on your way and end up in a trap where you’re being shot at from all sides.


Hit Play-Button to see the manual runthrough.

All the game’s graphical options were set to maximum detail, I only left “soft shadows” disabled, it can screw up the way shadows are drawn and actually make the game looks less realistic in some scenes.



This game is demanding, that’s for sure, at 1024x768 8xAF the low-range is not able to pump out enough frames to keep the gameplay fluent, the X1600XT is also quite slow, falling behind the X800GTO and 6600GT. The X1800GTO and 7600GT duke it out in the mid-range, while minimum FPS are slightly in favor of the X1800GTO the average numbers are noticeable higher with the 7600GT.



At higher resolution the 7600GT has a firm lead, while the X1600XT is now ahead of the 6600GT.

Squiggly lines chart

The X800GTO and 6600GT are quite evenly matched in this game:




The X1800GTO and 7600GT compared:

Flatout
Official Website

Flatout is a multiplatform game, released on XBOX and PS2 as well as on the PC, without a doubt the PC version is the better looking one, with high resolution textures and plenty of AA/AF control.

This race game is very arcade like, but the control over the vehicle does provide for a challenge, with lots of destructible scenery, a turbo option and aggressive opponents things can get hectic. In the movie below I do a 3-lap race on the first track of the game.


Hit Play-Button to see the manual runthrough.

This graphics engine was build for scalability and speed (capped at 100FPS) – all cards were able to easily obtain maximum FPS (100) even at 1280x1024 8xAF. So I instead of showing you charts displaying this, I decided to see how the 6600GT and 7600GT would do in SLI, using different games.

SLI Performance

For the price of two 6600GT you can get one 7600GT, so it would prove interesting to see how they match up, 6600GT SLI vs 7600GT.



6600GT SLI gives a 100% speed boost, enough to match the performance of a single 7600GT.



Also in Call of Duty 2 the 6600GT SLI proves to be more powerful.



FEAR becomes fluently playable in SLI with the 6600GT and performance again surpasses that of a single 7600GT.



Not all engines scale well with SLI, some do better than others, Oblivion does get a boost, but it’s nothing spectacular



The 6600GT gets a small boost from SLI, while the 7600GT in SLI gets a massive 100% increase, making the game playable at these settings. The same can be seen in Battlefield 2:

Futuremark Benchmarks

These synthetic systems tests from Futuremark give you a good overall idea of performance between the video cards; you should not solely rely on these results though as the game benchmarks do not always reflect these rankings:





Overclocking

Getting good value for money and gaming enthusiasts almost always goes hand in hand with overclocking. If you can squeeze more FPS from your video card without paying more, then that’s free performance.

From the cards in this roundup only the eVGA 7600GT CO/CO SC refused to overclock, not even 1Mhz over stock speeds, they come factory overclocked, to the limit. The X1300 Pro’s memory also refused to overclock, the GPU got a nice boost though.



I used Oblivion to check on performance, I also included stock 7600GT vs 7600GT CO SC numbers. These are the average FPS:



The Asus X1300 Pro and Club 3D get a nice boost in performance, close to 20%! The 7600GT only sees a +4.5% benefit from overclocking. The other cards get a ~10% FPS boost.


Conclusive Thoughts

If you are a less demanding gamer you’ll find that you don’t need the latest and most expensive video card out there to enjoy gaming, even with low-range models you can get acceptable performance if you sacrifice detail and high resolution.

From the low range cards in this roundup the Sparkle 6600GT and Powercolor X800GTO are most interesting, the Asus X1300 Pro Silent only advantage is its passive cooling solution, which makes it a prime candidate for a non-gaming HTPC. The performance of the X800GTO and 6600GT is quite on par throughout the games, older games run fluently at higher resolutions while newer games requires you drop detail levels. The 6600GT can be paired and run in SLI which makes its overall performance jump up and on par with a single 7600GT in some games.

The Asus X1600XT offered mixed results, sometimes performing on par with the mid-range products, sometimes doing worse than the low-range video cards. Again its main selling point is the passive cooling, it has more horsepower than the X1300 Pro so it will be more suitable for gaming, however at price close to that of the mid-range products like the Club3D X1800RX which offers better performance, it’s hard to recommend.

At the top of the price range sits the eVGA SuperClocked version of the 7600GT, it took the performance crown in this roundup, outperforming the X1800GTO consistently, however the performance increase over a 7600GT running at reference speeds is not really worth the extra asking price. The 7600GT’s bottleneck is not the GPU or Memory clocks speeds but the amount of pipelines. The X1800GTO on the other hand, while trailing the 7600GT, scales better when overclocked, seeing increases up to 20%.

In this roundup we are missing the 7300GS from nVidia which is direct competition for the X1300 Pro price wise, however going by this excellent comparison, nVidia’s offering is trailing the X1300 Pro in performance. This month nVidia announced the 7300GT card and there’s the 7600GS which appears to be slightly slower than the X1800GTO.

I hope this roundup will help you make an informed buying decision. Thank you for reading.

Question/Comments: forum thread