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August 2006 Video Card Price GuideBy SharkyExtreme.com Staff August 29, 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 XT, and extending all the way to the top-of-the-line Radeon X1800 and X1900/X1950 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 X1900-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. August was another very nice month for ATI buyers, and there are some serious deals at the mainstream performance and high-end sections of the chart. These included nine price drops that hit double digits, including a few over $70, resulting in an aggregate chart decrease of $534 for August. The All-in-Wonder Radeon X800 XL 256MB PCIe received the largest cut and fell by $151, while the All-in-Wonder Radeon X800 XT 256MB AGP dropped by $93, bringing these more in line with other AiW and Radeon X800-based cards. We're not done there, and the Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB fell by $83, while the Radeon X1900 Crossfire 512MB received a $72 price cut. There are also some interesting values in the Radeon X850 range, and some vendors are offering Radeon X850 XT + CrossFire dual-card bundles at cut-rate prices.
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