Cheapo graphics cards

France
Finding a good all-rounder value graphics card is increasingly difficult. With the withdrawal of Hercules from the graphics card, there is one less ATI manufacturer in the field. Fortunately, Mediamax seems to have stepped in and took Hercules/Guillemot's place. Octopussy is selling a Mediamax Radeon 9800SE All in Wonder for €197, £113+VAT.

Based on the Radeon 9800 VPU, it ressembles the Hercules Radeon 9800SE through its 256-bit wide memory channel which essentially removes any memory related bottleneck. The card includes 128MB memory. Altephkat who bought it found that it had a R350 core and a core speed of 375MHz and a memory speed of 594MHz, much less than the usual 380MHz/680MHz of stock Radeon 9800SE. Overclocking brings it to 405MHz and 770MHz respectively, not that much interesting.

What makes that card more interesting is that it can be soft modded using software found here - it re-enables any diabled pixel pipelines as the Radeon 9800SE is supposed to have four of them disabled while omega drivers can also improve the native Radeon 9800SE performance.

Essentially, Mediamax provides you with more space for improvement than other cards.

At the worst, you will get a Radeon 9600 performance with a TV Tuner and loads of I/O. Additionally, you get one DVI port and one TV out. You'll need a DVI-Dsub adaptor for a CRT though. On close inspection, you will find that the Mediamax card and the now-defunct Hercules card look like they come from the same mould. Get your Radeon 9800SE AIW as soon as you can as these models are quickly disappearing from shelves. As for a X800Pro AIW, only time will tell. µ

US
DOOM III has sparked a new hardware upgrading frenzy across the world. Nvidia is the big winner of that draw while our pockets are probably the ones most suffering. To alleviate it, better not go for the top of the range video cards. However, nothing prevents you from buying the next best and then overclocking it. The Gainward 6800GT also known as the Gainward's Ultra/2400 is special for three things.

Firstly, it overclocks beautifully well, secondly, it comes with a manufacturer's warranty that covers that overclocking and thirdly, it comes or will come with DOOM III software. The card comes with 256MB DDR3 memory and an eye catching red bright PCB color with red components. The GPU in this case runs at 350MHz while the memory runs at 1GHz. Overclocking it brings it to 6800Ultra speed with 400MHz and 1.1GHz speeds respectively. You won't be able to overclock these cards even more. Two 60mm fans with a full size copper base will make sure that the card remains constantly cool.

You can always adjust the fan rotation speed to make sure the cards remains silent. The Ultra/2400 has two DVI connectors and two converters as well as a S-Video output. As GamePC puts it, "we love that the card can overclock so well, and we love that Gainward includes two native DVI-I ports on the board. If noise isn't a factor in your system, the Gainward Ultra 2400/XP would be highly recommended. It's the best performing GeForce 6800 GT currently on the market."

The card is available from allstarshop. Want something cheaper, then head for futurepowerpc and get a PNY Geforce 6800GT for only $389 and try to overclock it to Ultra levels. µ

UK
There is really only one place to go if you want to get a cheap Radeon 9800 pro delivered to your doorsteps, if you live in UK that is. Evesham via its lowestonweb website is offering one of these cards for £125 only including VAT and delivery. Using Omega drivers and a BIOS flash, it can be successfully converted to a Radeon 9800 XT. Dimitrios who tried it got nearly 20,000 marks in 3Dmark 2001. Memory can be overclocked up to 425MHz core/770MHz memory using a more suitable heat sink fan. The card apparently is a Club3D - CGA-P988TVD - one with a small heat sink - nothing on the memory modules with stock speed of 380MHz for the core and 340MHz for the Hynix memory. If you just happen to find a cheaper price for the card, Lowestonweb might even match it for you. µ

Singapore
Sometimes, a mid-range video card might serve you better than you think. If you do not plant to go DOOM III in a near future and prefer to concentrate on rediscovering Quake III or Half-Life. Take the Gecube ATI Radeon 9600XTGU Extreme which features the Radeon 9600XT clocked to 500MHz with an onboard Turbo Fan cooler and 400MHz/2.5ns 128MB BGA DDR memory from Samsung.

The Xtreme edition is almost guaranteed to overclock wonderfully well - up too the region of 590MHz for the core and 810MHz for the memory. It got the Most Overclockable Product title from Hardwarezone. It is on sale at Bell for S$335. The cooler covers the GPU and the rear memory modules as well. Vijay Anand of HWZ says of it "All in all, the GeCube RADEON 9600XT 128MB Extreme Edition offers you outstanding performance for its caliber, has an extra large custom-made cooler unit that resembles the fierce RADEON 9800XT's cooling solution, quiet operation, overclocks extremely well thanks to more expensive higher clocked memory parts and is still priced affordably". It is by some margin the most powerful 9600XT and will best most unmodded 9800SE easily. To give you a slight idea of what you can expect, tests showed that it was competitive with the 5700Ultra and the 5800. Grab some of these babies quick if you can't afford to fork out more dollars on more expensive cards. µ