Buying a new 3D video card for PC gaming is enough to drive one mad. It ought to be like buying a car - figure out who the manufacturers are, look at their model lineups, and pick one that fits in your budget. The reality is completely the opposite.
I've been looking to upgrade my current 3D video card. Not that I'm on the cutting edge of gaming - most of the games I play are around two years old (cheap and good), and I'm not into those first-person fast-twitch shooters. Since my requirements are pretty low, I figured should be able to get a card that uses whatever cutting edge technology was around when those games originally came out for pretty cheap. The thing is, I don't want to overspend on performance I don't need, nor do I want to cheap out and wind up with a card that is too slow for my games.
The way the video card industry works is that there are two main companies that design (and manufacture, I think) the chipsets: ATI and NVidia. Here is where the confusion begins. Each of these companies have three current lines of graphics processing units (GPUs) at any given time. Sounds simple. But there isn't really much differentiating these different models - unlike Intel, where you have one line for servers, another line for desktop machines, and another for laptops, 3D graphics cards pretty much all do the same thing - display 3D graphics for games in desktop PCs. It's just that some are faster than others and can render fancy effects. (I won't even discuss the fancy pseudo-engineering jargon used to describe the actual features of the different cards.)
The nomenclature is really confusing, too. The GPU manufacturers use numbers and letters to differentiate their processor lines instead of names that carry some meaning. When you hear Xeon you know it's a server chip and when you hear Pentium-M, you know it's a laptop processor. (Ok, in reality it's not that simple with CPUs anymore, either.) What's the difference between an ATI 9600 and a 9800? Haven't these guys heard about this little concept called "branding"?
Another thing to add to the confusion is that the GPU designers usually come out with several variations of the same chipsets. Usually one is a crippled, "lite" version (but cheaper) and one is a faster "Pro" version (but more expensive). On top of that, most video cards are offered with two different capacities of on-board RAM (say 128 MB and 256 MB) So we have two manufacturers with three lines of GPUs, and each line has three variations, each with two different quantities of RAM.
2 * 3 * 3 * 2 = 36 different models to choose from.
(There are also four different types of video card slots, but I won't go there. That would be too depressing.)
If it ended there, it would be pretty hard to select a video card, but now consider the fact that new GPU models are introduced over time. The brilliant marketers at these companies pick really imaginative new names for their new models. They just increment the numbers. It's hard being a marketer. So let's say that the current models from ATI are called the 9500 for the middle line and the 9700 for the top line. The new ones come out and they're called the 9600 and the 9800. Now the responsible shopper goes online and searches for video cards, and sees that he can choose from the 9500, 9600, 9700, and 9800. Maybe the numbering nomenclature is a good thing - higher numbers are better right? Nope. Is the 9700 faster than the 9600? Not necessarily, if the 9600 uses newer technology. Remember that each line has fast and crippled versions as well. What about the new midrange card from ATI, it it faster than the high end card from NVidia from a few years ago?
To make things really complicated. ATI and NVidia also design and sell video cards for their own GPUs, but at the same time, they license their chips to other manufacturers, along with "reference" designs for the video cards. These other parties can then design their own video cards based on the reference models, but are free to change up the designs - maybe use different heat sinks or fancy cooling systems, or have a different mix of output ports, or make the cards physically smaller for smaller computer cases. They can also bundle different software in their retail packages.
The end result is an explosion of different models of video cards on the market that are really pretty much the same thing. The cards are all so generic that there aren't really any standouts (except maybe at the extreme high end), so you can't even rely on word of mouth or online reviews because no one really compares the same thing twice. All the cards are just different enough to matter, but choosing between them is incomprehensible to the non l33t g4m3r who doesn't spend all day reading discussion boards.
The sensible thing to do then, is to just look at the relative performance of a few different cards at your favorite store (like Newegg) and pick one that represents a good value. Good idea, but still not so easy. Hardware review sites rely on a de facto industry standard benchmark suite called 3D Mark that uses a set of simulated gaming situations to measure performance. Unfortunately, the company that created the benchmark has to keep making money, so they keep coming out with different versions of 3D Mark every year or so. The result? One card on the shelf boasts "1585 points on 3D Mark 05" and the one next to it says "300000 points on 3D Mark 06". You can't compare benchmarks from 3D Mark 05 and 3D Mark 06 because they are calculated differently, so comparing two boxes on the shelf is pointless (pun intended). On top of that, a significant factor of the 3D Mark 06 depends on CPU performance, so you really can't compare two 3D Mark 06 scores. What is the point of a benchmark that measures two variables at once? (Yes, I understand that the benchmark is measuring overall 3D graphics performance, but what's the use if it doesn't help you select a video card?)
I mentioned before that the manufacturers can change the cooling systems on their cards. In the old days, PC cases were all the same size and shape, and the add-in card manufacturers were pretty consistent about making sure their cards fit within the space allotted to a single expansion slot. Nowadays, gaming-oriented video cards pump out massive amounts of heat, requiring huge exotic cooling fans and heat sinks that can take up a whole extra slot or more next to the video card. Also, some computer cases are low profile (such as for Home Theater applications), so sometimes you need a card that is shorter than normal. Did I mention that the picture of the product is rarely on the outside of the box? A least sometimes you get a clear plastic window.
The reason for this whole diatribe is that I spent a whole lot of time doing a bunch of research on what card to buy, including several trips to different computers stores to compare products, and still wound up buying a card that didn't work out. I thought for sure that my three-year-old cheapo video card would be far outperformed by a relatively new card that cost more than the old one did originally, but it actually turned out to be a lot slower. Doh!
Next time you shop for a video card, take my advice. What I should have done is downloaded the free versions of the 3DMark 03, 05, and 06 benchmarks, then run them against my current card for a baseline to compare against when shopping for a new card. (Downloading the benchmark software turned out to be an annoying process, too.) Now to see if I can return that slow card I just bought...
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