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January Video Card Price GuideBy SharkyExtreme.com Staff January 18, 2006Welcome 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 or PriceGrabber, but instead looks to present a monthly 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 listed as PCIe, 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 mainstream Radeon X700 Pro/X1600 Pro, and extending all the way to the top-of-the-line Radeon X850 XT and X1800 XL/XT cards. 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 X1800-based cards featured in the list are the models that are readily available online, and we continue to drop last-generation cards that are extremely difficult to find. January marks yet another great month for ATI buyers, and in addition to a few very nice individual cuts, the aggregate chart drop was over $350. There were twelve drops that reached double-digits, including a huge $138 cut to the price of the Radeon X1800 XT 512MB CrossFire Edition, and an $83 drop to the Radeon X800 XT 256MB PCI Express. In terms of overall trends, the Radeon X1800 XT boards took the top spot on the price cut list, and two of the top three places, with Radeon X1800 XL and Radeon X800 256MB cards rounding out most of the other larger price cuts. It's not all good news in ATI video cards, as there were three double-digit price jumps, including a healthy $72 spike to the All-in-Wonder Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB.
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