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Sub $100 Budget Videocard Roundup
Sub $100 Budget Videocard Roundup - PCSTATS
Most people don't "enjoy" spending $500 every six months just to keep up with the newest technology.
 85% Rating:   
Filed under: Video Cards Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website: Various Apr 03 2002   C. Sun  
Home > Reviews > Video Cards > Various

Sub $100 Budget Videocard Roundup


I am more of a performance freak myself and I often forget that everyone is not this dedicated to the humble videocard. Most people don't "enjoy" spending $500 every six months just to keep up with the newest technology just so they can do this.

Let's face it, most of us really don't need the latest and greatest videocard on the block, heck if 75Hz refresh rates don't give you a headache you can get by on some of the cheapest videocards around without a problem.

Today we're going to take a look at seven videocards that are priced under $125 CDN ($80USD) and see how they fair in various applications from Winbench to SPECviewperf to 3DMark. After all, offices, schools, and other "normal" places do not need to buy really expensive video cards just so their staff or students can surf the web or type up a report. Our thanks to Perfect Systems for lending us these videocards to test.

The videocards we used are listed below and were subjected to a whole slew of 2D and 3D benchmarks.

video card comparisons
hercules prophet 4000 hercules prophet 4500 pine 6326 powercolor m64 asus v7100 pro ati xpert 2000pro ati xpert 98
chipset

kyro

kyro 2

sis 6326

tnt2 m64

geforce2 mx400

rage128 pro

rage gl

ramdac

270 mhz

300 mhz

175 mhz

300 mhz

350 mhz

300 mhz

230 mhz

core width

128 bit

128 bit

64 bit

128 bit

256 bit

128 bit

64 bit

memory size

64mb

64 mb

8 mb

32 mb

64 mb

32 mb

8 mb

memory width

128 bit

128 bit

64 bit

64 bit

128 bit

128 bit

64 bit

price (cdn)

$80

$105

$35

$69

$125

$65

$35

extras

tv-out

n/a

n/a

tv-out

n/a

n/a

n/a

Video Cards Side by Side

Hercules Prophet 4000

Hercules Prophet 4500

Pine 6326

PowerColor M64

Asus V7100 Pro

ATi Xpert 2000Pro

ATi Xpert 98

While the prices range quite a bit, they're all at or under $125 CDN, a price point that is more than affordable.

The RAMDAC (Random Access Memory Digital to Analog Converter) speeds are what determine 2D quality. Using the Samsung 181B Samsung LCD monitor for testing we noticed that more often than not the Pine 6326 exhibited the worst 2D image quality of the lot. At a screen resolution of 1024x768-32bit at 75 Hz the letters all over the screen were just blurry.

Next in line was the the Xpert 98. Obviously with a low RAMDAC speed of 230 MHz the words were also a bit blurry. Good for it's day, but lousy compared to current technology. The next card was rather surprising, the PowerColor TNT2 M64 with a RAMDAC of 300 MHz was also rather bad. We often had to struggle to read words which were at font sizes of 2 or smaller. As for the Prophet 4000 and 4500, the V7100Pro and the Xpert 2000 Pro; they delivered crisp images even at a resolution of up to 1280x1024 (max for the monitor). Now its time for some benchmarking to see where your $125 or less are going ;)

© 2023 PCSTATS.com Next Page >

 

Contents of Article: Various
 Pg 1.  — Sub $100 Budget Videocard Roundup
 Pg 2.  Benchmarks and painful results
 Pg 3.  3DMark and QIII areana Benchmarks

 
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