Best Bang Per Buck Graphics Cards for October 2008

October 8 2008, 10:57pm

Tom's Hardware recently released their October 2008 choice picks for gaming video cards.

      Recommended PCI-E cards:

Radeon HD 3650 GDDR3 (US$35) Radeon HD 4670 GDDR3 ($85) GeForce 9600 GSO (aka GeForce 8800 GS) ($85) Radeon HD 3870 ($100) GeForce 9600 GT ($100) GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (aka GeForce 9800 GT 512MB) ($120) Radeon HD 4850 ($170) Radeon HD 4870 ($260) GeForce GTX 260 ($260) GeForce 9800 GX2 ($260) 2x Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire Configuration ($340) Radeon HD 4870 X2 ($550)

If you are building a new system, and will just use it for some very light gaming on the side, the Radeon HD 3650 GDDR3 would probably be a good-enough discreet graphics solution. Other than that, the 8800 GT 512MB, 9800 GT 512MB, and HD 4850 seem to be the "middle-ground" choice cards.

      Recommended AGP cards:

Radeon HD 3650 (under $US100) Radeon HD 2600 XT ($100) Radeon HD 3850 512MB ($135)

[Source: Tom's Hardware | The Best Graphics Cards for the Money: October 2008] It's interesting to note that an AGP HD 3650 card would cost almost 3 times a PCI-E card with the same GPU. Unless you need to replace a broken AGP card, maybe that $100 is best kept for your next system build.

Technorati : agp, bang, best, buck, card, game, gaming, graphics, october, pci-e