Why $100 and Cheaper Graphics Cards?

Today we’re going to examine one incarnation of the new RADEON X300 graphics processor on the example of the PowerColor X300 SE graphics card. Like with other RADEONs, the “SE” suffix denotes a cut-down memory bus. This time its width is reduced from 128 to 64 bits, and this graphics card is the cheapest discrete solution whose competitors are integrated solutions from NVIDIA, Intel and even from ATI Technologies itself.

But why would you want a $100 and cheaper card, and do such products have any future? We would compare the current trends in the low-end graphics market with those that made cheap discrete sound cards vanish some time ago. As the integrated sound was becoming perfected, only expensive and high-quality devices could live on, because inbuilt codecs are no match for them by their very nature. But the evolution of integrated audio is still going on, by the way – recall the Intel High-Definition Audio technology as an example.

It is practically the same to what we see now in the world of cheap graphics. Until recently, integrated graphics solutions (save for the NVIDIA nForce2 IGP, probably) were so slow and unpractical for anything but office use that even a slowest standalone graphics card would provide a much better performance in 3D games and applications. A graphics card could also give you hardware DirectX 8.1 or even DirectX 9 and save from 8 to 64 megabytes of system RAM which would otherwise be used by the integrated graphics core. Thus, graphics cards priced at $100 and below had their customer and felt at their ease.

But the release of Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, the new-generation integrated graphics core from Intel, poised a threat to inexpensive add-on graphics cards. It is the first time that an integrated graphics core can almost match discrete solutions. Purchasing an i915G-based mainboard, the user also receives a full-featured graphics subsystem capable of processing four pixels per clock and providing support of version 2.0 pixel shaders. The ATI RADEON 9100 IGP chipset is on the same level of performance, by the way, although lacks the DirectX 9 functionality.

Talking about owners of mainboards with the i915G or RADEON 9100 IGP – will they want a $100 graphics card? It depends on the user and his/her specific needs, of course. As yet, discrete graphics cards have a number of advantages over integrated solutions. Particularly, they have from 64 to 256MB of dedicated graphics memory – this is a nice chunk if you’ve got less than 512MB of system RAM installed. The dedicated memory accessed across a dedicated bus also positively affects the performance of the graphics subsystem since the graphics processor doesn’t share this bus with any other device.

Besides that, external graphics cards, even inexpensive, usually have DVI and TV outputs and display a 2D image of a higher quality; many cards also support output to two monitors at once. These things are still unavailable even for most advanced integrated solution like Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, not mentioning others.

Another important fact is that discrete graphics cards don’t have any driver-related problems and usually construct a correct 3D scene in games and applications – both ATI and NVIDIA have long solved such problems, while Intel is still facing them. As yet, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 shows numerous artifacts in modern games that make a wide use of DirectX 9 capabilities. This is no good for a user who wants to enjoy the beauties of Far Cry, for example.

Of course, inexpensive add-on graphics cards are going to lose their appeal in the future, but not till integrated chipsets offer the user all the necessary functionality and stable drivers. Until that, the sector of 100$ and cheaper graphics cards will be flourishing, although the pressure from Intel with its i915G is already felt.