17 entry and mid level graphic cards (page 15: Conclusion)

Conclusion

Is it possible to play games with an entry level graphic card? Yes, we did it. Of course, it’s important to put this answer in perspective with the different tests results. It isn’t possible to play all games comfortably with all graphic cards, meaning with perfect fluidity. Some do not give us the option of playing all games even with low graphic quality requirements and others have bugs.

Also, if it is possible to play games that are 1 or 2 years old with good resolutions, this isn’t the case for recent games using advanced graphics. Newer games may require you to use very low resolutions of 640 x 480 or 800 x 600. Now it is up to you to see if this resolution is acceptable at a time when a basic monitor is a 17" 1280 x 1024 TFT. From our point of view it’s far from being ideal.

So we would advise gamers to use at least a X700 Pro or 6600 GT or even a X700 SE or 6600 if you are on a tighter budget. At each level NVIDIA is slightly ahead in terms of capabilities and performance, but we have to keep in mind that this advance will cost you $20 to $30 more compared to ATI solutions. This amount of money is far from being negligible for these types of products.

Below this range, you will have to make several concessions in terms of graphic quality. Of course, if it is impossible for you to spend more you will have to make a choice between lower budget graphic cards. If you really want to save some money, the Radeon X300 SE HyperMemory 32 MB and the GeForce 6200 TurboCache 32 and 64 MB provide similar 3D performances overall. Also, and here is rather a good surprise, they are much closer in practice to the Radeon X300 and GeForce 6200, which feature 128 MB memory with 128 bits, than to the same chips with a 64 bits bus memory. These two types of technology without being miraculous bring a plus for entry level products as they can significantly improve performances at lower production costs.

The 6200 TC takes the lead over the X300 HM thanks to hardware WMV HD video decompression and small options, which allow the replacing of low quality interpolation of most TFT monitors with a better GPU processed one. There is a slightly higher price.

The GeForce 6200 TurboCache 16 MB has to be treated separately, and we still wonder if this card is really useful. Indeed compared to integrated solutions it has higher quality drivers with fewer bugs, but performances aren’t better and even slightly inferior. We can’t even count on HD video acceleration, because it doesn’t support it. $50 for fewer bugs in games with low performances is quite a high price!

During the past few months Intel made some serious progress for integrated solutions. Of course, performances are still far from being sufficient for serious play, but drivers are improving fast even if there is still some work to do. Four games tested didn’t even start with the i915G and i945G. These GPUs are handicapped for certain games because of the absence of T&L and Vertex Shader hardware, adding another load to the CPU. Intel’s dual core might avoid this problem by redirecting calculations to the unused core! This might reduce the gap even more between integrated solutions and entry level graphic cards, pressuring ATI and NVIDIA to improve entry level products performances. This wouldn’t be a bad thing!