Sharky Guides

Introduction

Welcome to the first edition of the Sharky Extreme Video Card Price Guide, which complements our current CPU and Memory guides by presenting a monthly snap-shot of the overall market. This follows the same basic pattern as our CPU price guide, starting off with individual lists for both NVIDIA and ATI, then separating them into the various entry-level, mainstream and high-end market segments, and finishing up with a sorted price list combining all the cards.

The video card price lists are not meant to duplicate the vendor selection of an online price engine like PriceWatch, but instead looks to present a view of the overall video card marketplace. The video cards and manufacturers in the price lists are selected due to video chip and brand popularity, market visibility, and overall positioning. In some cases, we only show the OEM price for less popular models, while including multiple retail cards at the hotter ends of the market.

* Please note that unless otherwise stated (using an OEM designation) the listed video cards are full retail boxed editions.

ATI-Based Video Cards

The ATI market consists of the Radeon 9X00-based video cards, ranging from the entry-level Radeon 9000, all the way up to the top-of-the-line Radeon 9800XT. The following list is sorted by product line to give a full view of the various ATI-based options, and show exactly which models include special All-in-Wonder editions and larger memory capacities. The Radeon 9X00 cards featured in the list are the ones that are readily available online, and we've left out some last-generation cards (like the Radeon 9500 Pro and Radeon 9700) that are extremely difficult to find.