Ben's Bargains Serving Fresh Deals 24/7

It seems that Ben's video card deals don't attract the audiance they used to.... very sad that discussions on clogged drains are stealing the limelight. I wonder who is to blame?

5750 quite a nice display card

budget minded $140

Hopefully the black angel of death #1.

The blame... Is the simple fact that the market is screwed-up as there's no rivalry. The old price to performance equation has disappeared and consumers are left having a hard time adjusting... Have you seen pricing for GTX 260/275, while a few 4890's have good prices the 4870/4850's have elevated in price.

Sure ATI has fine new products that deliver the latest technology and features for the extenuating pricing, but the last generation stuff still beats on the BfB quotient.

Now that Nvidia won't be bringing any of their Dx11 cards too market until March, we're left in limbo. 1) Buy an up-to-date technology cards that provides "on-par" or less performance, while essentially has no games released that use it, or... 2) Buy the last generation stuff at higher prices that 4-5 months ago and be without or yearning to update again when titles based on Dx11 start showing? I saw a recent list the other day (now I'm not locating it) that had 6-8 titles "out or releasing" by Q2 using Dx11.

Honestly, it's hard to say which way to go if you really desire to game, while I'm of the opinion just wait, don't vote with your money. It will be a long wait till April, that's when I see the gaming market for graphic cards really coming back alive.

There's one shining star for causal gaming/budget/lower power PSU/stock OEM box crowd (they doesn't normally care for the latest and greatest technology or features) and that's the new GT240, strong performance (aka 9600GT), while lower power than the 4670... that's sweet.

The only problem is Nvidia's pricing for GDDR5 model (the only one worth having) is overpriced by a good $25. Then there's ATI's release of Cedar/Redwood parts... who knows how they'll change things as having Dx11 capability and good power and performance, but not due till January.

*Edit* - On the subject of power consumption for the GT240 the Idle and average are nice, although watch which model you choose as the Palit OC Sonic really jumps up in tests above Idle and it's performance numbers confirm it by it pulling 20-35W more that's enough to send most OEM/stock PSU's over the edge. While the MSI with 512Mb GDDR5 is good all around, however they aren't all that great 1680x150, it has a 22% less performance to watt at such a “normal” resolution.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GeForce_GT_240/28.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GT_240_Sonic/28.html

Nice useful info on this discussion.