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January Video Card Price GuideBy SharkyExtreme.com Staff January 5, 2005Welcome to the Sharky Extreme Video Card Price Guide, which follows our current CPU and Memory guides by presenting a 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, and unless expressly stated either way, are assumed to be AGP models. The ATI market starts with the Radeon 9X00-based video cards, ranging from the entry-level Radeon 9000 to the powerful Radeon 9800XT, and extending all the way to the top-of-the-line Radeon x800 XT Platinum. The following list is sorted by product line to give a full view of the various ATI-based options, and exactly which models include special All-in-Wonder editions and larger memory capacities. The Radeon 9X00 and X300 to X800-based cards featured in the list are the ones that are readily available online, and we continue to drop last-generation cards that are extremely difficult to find. 2005 comes in with a whimper with the majority of ATI-based cards, and with the exception of the ultra high-end, there is not much to get excited about. In fact, the only double-digit price cuts in the non-enthusiast area hit two unexpected cards, the ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB OEM and ATI Radeon 9800SE 128MB OEM, both of which were already priced quite low. To get any further activity we need to head for higher ground, where the ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum 256MB (-$59), Sapphire Radeon X800 XT Platinum 256MB (-$20), and ASUS Radeon X800 XT 256MB (-$14) showed noticeable price drops. It wasn't all good news at the high-end, as we move down a step to the Radeon X800 Pro 256MB level and find prices moving up by anywhere from $10 to $29. In many cases, it's worth it to spend a bit more and just move to the Radeon X800 XT 256MB.
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