Daily Hardware Buys

UK
Acortech provides the cheapest Radeon 8500 to date at $35. This GPU was ATI's answer to Geforce 3 Ti 500 back in August 2001. It is a new OEM card and comes with only cable and CDROM. The Radeon 8500 has been renamed as Radeon 9100 and is still pretty competitive with today's entry level video cards except for latest DX9 video games. There is little details as to whether the card is based on a Radeon 8500 or a LE edition which running at 250Mhz. The memory modules are covered with passive heatsinks so that we might expect to have rather good overclocking capabilities. It can apparently reach core speed of 300Mhz and memory speed of 280Mhz. Xbitlabs says of the Radeon 8500 LE that it's "the unrivalled leader of our value section: in speed and picture quality in 3D applications. It used to belong to high-end products, but now its price is quite affordable and it both supports pixel and vertex shaders, well debugged drivers and reveals no problems at work". The Acortech Radeon card incudes a DVI, a D-Sub and a TVO port. Also it seems that the card has an additional Rage Theater chip which provides much better TV image. The price does include free shipping.

USA
Bitzotech is selling a Hercules Geforce 3 Ti200 with TVO for only £ 21. As for the Radeon 8500 above, this card should perform superbly when compared to the competition at this price range. It offers the Geforce 3 core with a core frequency of 175Mhz and a Memory frequency of 400Mhz. With a 6.4Gb/Sec memory bandwidth, it is still very competitive with today's entry level. The Hercules Geforce 3 Ti200 sports directX programmable Vertex and Pixel Shaders, quite a novelty at that time though not now. It also has an onboard TV encoder for DVD playback. This is a pulled product and comes without any drivers or cable. Overclocking is a breeze on this card with frequencies of 230Mhz/520Mhz reachable without much effort, beyond the actual Ti500 speed. Guru3d says that "The Ti 200 is an extremely fast and feature rich graphics card. If I'd have to buy a videocard right now this would be my choice. Excellent performance and with a little tweaking you can easily boost the performance close to the GeForce3 Ti500. When we look at the price range this product is targeted against ATI's Radeon 7500, whichever one you choose is up to you but in terms of performance, stability and support the Ti 200 is clearly the winner here."

France
It might not be the sexiest LCD monitor on earth but the HPC Silver monitor sports the best value for money in France. With integrated speakers and DVI and VGA ports, as well as a 17" LCD screen (comparable to a 18" CRT monitor), it costs only € 359, slightly less than £240 all inclusive. The manufacturer appears to be Sambada but that particular model does not appear anywhere on the website. It also comes with a three year warranty and a stylish silver/black frame. It is available at microbank here..

Singapore
From Singapore comes the CREATIVE SoundBlaster Audigy (24-bit) ES SE 5.1 as sold by the Hardwareplace (T:63345090). S$89 (£28) is not much for the first generation Audigy sound card, although you can find it slightly cheaper in the US or in UK. Featuring Creative Labs 24-bit Advanced HD, it offers 24-bit audio quality and 96Khz bit depth together with a 100dB signal to noise ratio. It offers Dolby digital 5.1 and playback, EAX advanced HD support, support for ASIO and soundfont 2.1 as well as 5.1 audio technology. The Audigy ES SE is the entry level card of the Audigy family, replacing the SB Live at the bottom of the sound chain. No reviews are available on the net. Furthermore you can compare the whole SB audigy at this place and find more about the Creative SB Audigy ES SE here.

If you do know about any special offers in any of these countries, please let me know.