ATI's new Radeons pack DirectX 10.1 and HDMI into $55 cards
ATI's new Radeon HD 4550 and 4350 cards may not the bottom of the shaft after accusations of price-fixing has sent GPU prices plummeting for the last few months, but they are certainly cheap.
Both cards feature DirectX 10.1 graphics, HDMI out and 7.1 channel audio, with the $55 4550 differentiating itself from its $16 cheaper cousin with 512MB of DDR3 memory and 96 GFLOPS of power. The 4350, on the other hand, halves the DDR3.
These look to be killer little budget cards when they're released in October. For $55, I may very well slap one in my Acer Aspire HTPC and start doing some of my PC gaming from a supine position on the couch.
ATI Radeon™ HD 4550 and ATI Radeon™ HD 4350 Graphics Cards Load Up Compelling Gaming and Multimedia Features [Business Wire via Crunchgear]
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I am going to be building a new pc in the next week, and these look to be a great deal.
Sorry to be slightly off topic, but I have been waiting for a somewhat relevant post to ask this question of BBG readers. Besides Newegg, which I hear is fantastic, what other web based companies do you recommend for assembling a PC? I would dive in a Mac, but the budget is not there. I am saving my duckets for a new Apple cinema display, I think they might release some in the new year. Who knows. But, I have a thousand dollar budget, and don't game. I am a graphics specialist, so basically this is just for running Adobe products. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
I've always had great results buying from Newegg. Occasionally I've picked up parts from geeks.com but frequently their surplus/reconditioned parts are no cheaper than Newegg. One way to find the best price (but not necessarily the best vendor!) is pricewatch.com; they have an excellent price comparison search engine. I've used that dozens of times on price sensitive projects; they have a vendor rating system so you have at least some info on who you're buying from. I haven't had any problems from vendors there but have heard third-hand reports of problems.
If I need something locally, I usually go to Microcenter. If there's one in your area, they've got decent prices on certain items and you can find what you want online first and buy it then pick up in store.
But nowadays, I pretty much just buy from Newegg. They've got good-to-excellent prices and excellent customer service. Once I had a mother board go bad after 11 months of use. I returned it and they didn't have any identical boards - so they credited my *full* original purchase amount. I used that to buy a nicer, much more modern board. That was impressive to me.
Man, this card almost makes me excited about upgrading again. I waited so long that I basically have to start from scratch and the prostpect of needing a new video card was depressing.
It's nice to see video cards, with docs and reasonable performance, which are also without fans. My most recent system has an ATI X1600 video card, bought specifically because of the lack of fan. More than enough performance, esp since I upgraded from an old Matrox G450. :]
John
P.S. I like Newegg too, it's got a great interface for searching and comparing stuff, and the prices are quite good. Not sure how you could really beat them overall.
I know it said the 4550 is going to be available fanless, but does anyone know about the 4350?
Also, as for retailers, I use ZipZoomFly.com and Frys.com in addition to NewEgg.
I was in the same "upgrade everything" boat, and went with a 780G motherboard - the built in video is good enough to play TF2.
I knew sooner or later I would have to buy a real card, but by the time I do, I'm sure it'll cost $50 or something.
I am now in the the official "Upgrade Everything" boat, because I decided to go purely laptop for the last two years. I think I'm still too conditioned by the ATI/Nvidia price inflation debacle to trust that I'll get good performance out of a $50 video card.
Fanless, 20W under load, HDMI with audio, for $39-$55, with decent GPU performance and open drivers.
Yiiiiikes. I finally can upgrade my HTPC's 7100GS.
Any sense of what format these cards will come in? Just PCI-E, or is AGP still a possibility?
Hmm, think this budget video card would have enough juice to run Warhammer Online? I was so wanting to play, but given that all I have are MacBooks and Mac Mini's at home, graphics power is not really available. I considered building a PC just to play, but given that all the cards they list as required are >$400 and my budget was like $500, I wept and went back to playing my Wii. (Why an MMORPG REQUIRES a high-end video card is beyond me. I'd be happy playing with crap graphics...)
You can game OK on modern basic level video cards, but be warned: it won't be pretty.
But no way do you have to spend $400. Video cards have crashed in price since they were caught price-fixing. I'm not even sure they *sell* a card much more over that anymore.
Get a cheap dell with a PCI-e x16 slot (Inspiron 530: http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspndt_530?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs), get a $200 video card from newegg, and you'll be happy as pie.
Rob
I'm also curious about AGP cards, guess I'll have to check their site.
Marley9, I've bought from Newegg, www.directron.com, and even TigerDirect. Interesting thing about TD: if it's not in-store, they'll order it and free drop-ship to your house.
Those of you asking about ATI AGP cards should be warned about their last crop. They needed a free 6pin pci-e power connector which most AGP buyers didn't have.
Most needed to locate and pay for an adapter which used 2 white power connectors such as the ones used for hard drives. These adapters tended to be very hard to find retail so most people needed to order online and wait. The companies which specialize in connectors also often tended to sneak in rather high shipping+handling charges which cost more than the connectors.
If they didn't also have 2 free white power connectors then they needed to get a splitter cable. These tended to be easier to find but still cost $5 or $6 retail.