Shopping for a new graphics card?

Well, I am. Sort of. I'm always "shopping" for HW upgrades, but rarely actually buying anything. Anyway, I periodically sample the state of graphics cards to see which one I would get if were getting one. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck...

It looks like the Radeon 8500 sits in the sweet spot right now.

The sweet spot is identified by two factors:

performance: Tom's VGA Charts
price: pricewatch.com

The 8500 is going for ~$120, and scores well above the other card in that bracket - the vanilla G3 (~$130). The 8500 nips at the heals of the G4 Ti 4200/4400, which are costing ~$200, and arm wrestles with the G3 Ti 500, which is also ~$200. (Interestingly, the G3 Ti 500 looks to be close to G4 performance on some apps, and well below on others.) Then there's a steep climb in both perf and price to get to the G4 Ti 4600 (>$300), for when you absolutely, positively have to be faster than everyone. :-]

If I was going to drop money on a card now, I'd probably get a Radeon 8500. I've been happy enough with the Radeon DDR vivo that I'd go with another ATI card. Plus, ATI really crams in the features, and if you know you're making a concession and not buying bleeding edge, you still get a "current" feature set. Plus - DX9 is using ATI's pixel shader spec, instead of nVidia's, so your DX9 support might eventually be better (just speculation).

The vanilla G3 is a good card, but I was expecting its price to be lower by now. Since it's still costing as much as an 8500, it's not an option. I'd be more interested in the vanilla G3 if it gets down to ~$75, but it looks like that'll be awhile, and by the time it gets there, the picture will have changed.

Anyway, that's how I'd spend my money if I was spending it today... which I'm not. [sigh]