Graphics card Holds Value?

I bought a Hercules Radeon 8500LE 128meg in April for 60 quid, including vat and delivery from Dabs.

Ive just had a look there to see what goes for that price now, and its all radeon 9000-9200's and Geforce FX5200's.

The radeons arent any better than my card (poss worse in raw power), and the FX5200 arent any better except they do DX9 (But poorly).

So my card appears to have retained its value (maybe not in terms of hard cash, but in performance).

I never expected this, does this show a particularly good bargain at the time, or does it show the lack of real progress since then in hte graphics industry?

Still, Im pretty chuffed

Comments?

That can happen :)

I bought my Radeon 9700pro from Crucial nearly a year ago (for just over £200).. and you can still get a decent £150 for it :D

yeah, pretty good i say

but if you paid 400 quid for a fx5800 and now can only get a loud noise and maybe 140 for it, youd be gutted, the key is good timing

ti4200s were a good buy 6 months ago, as they were goin 70ish second hand, and now you still see them got for 55 ish second hand, and still offer decent performance compared to newer cards

wouldn't have happened last year, but the graphics market in term's of performance has been relatively static :(

Less competition from Nvidia hasn't helped matters.

The performance from next springs cards should change things quiet a bit looking at some of the spec`s floating around the web.Thats why its not a good idea to go spending a lot of money on the top end cards just now. A good idea, If you have a old card in your kit box sitting around and you could do with out your top endder in your rig is think about selling it on some time soon. before the new Cores go to the shops.

Hmm. Come this Spring \ Summer, how much will my Sapphire Radeon 9800pro 128 be worth? :D

with top end cards, they always lose a lot... thats what you pay for bleeding edge performance,but i expected the middle of the road cards to at least lose a bit. personally, I have 250 quid waiting for the next big thing... althoug I doubt I'll spend it all, cos Im a tight git, and the price difference is far too much to justify.

Being a few months (and 200 quid) behind the top end seems like a great bargain to me, as lets face it, those with 9800XT's will probably upgrade at a similar time to me, and tho they will have superior cards, they wont be able to play any more games than I will, just with more specular lighting effects, and better antialaiasing. Sure it will look a bit better, but it "should" play as well, as the manufacturers have to cater for more than just the top end of players.

I reckon 2 months after the new ATI or NVIDIA range comes out, I will buy a new GFX card... It makes financial sense, and I will be abe to play alost all games on good settings, without 20x AA, and insane particle effects.

To be fair, yes this WILL make the game more realistic, but will it improve gameply one jot??? No is my prediction. The only reasons why minimum specs go up ar because more polygons are used (Processor and GFX dependant), and because more shadows, realistic textures, and lighting are used. If these are fully utilised by the game and engine, and are an essential part of how to best play the game, then fine.. I am more than willing to shell out for an immersive experience.

BUT (and this is bigger than J-Lo's) when it makes no major difference to the user, and an unimportant (if noticeable) difference to gameplay (as the coders have not spent huge amounts of time creating code to match the power of the graphics card, in a productive way; by this I mean an effect that truly adds to the the way a game is played, such as 3D sound, or polygon mapped shadows), then any lack of detail is non essential, and really only for the people who always have, and probably always will need the best system, no matter how powerful their machine is, and how photorealistic ther GFX card is

BTW, am quite pissed, and havent reread my (now realised) massive reply.

Thnx for the replies, and please remebe, its just my opinion, so no flames pls.

BoB_DoG :D

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I bought my Radeon 9700pro from Crucial nearly a year ago (for just over £200).. and you can still get a decent £150 for it

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i sold mine locally for £170 the other week:)

don't forget that xgi will be bringing their new cards out this year and they do look pretty tasty....twin 350mhz gpu's(8 pixel pipelines per gpu) and 256mb 750mhz ddr1 or 1000mhz ddr2...should provide some competition at the very least

A nice bit of research and knowledge predicts good graphics cards too ;)

Seems to be that alot of emphasis has moved from raw horse power to quality of image. So whilst the cards are moving sideways in terms of raw power they are about the same. So the previous mid range Fav (Ti4200) is still adequate for directx 8 games and is still well worth buying, hence holding its value.
Sorry for my poor grammar, I'm fealing rather befuddled and ill.

My ti4200 seems to be holding up well with the odd bursts of game playing. Cost me about £140 18 months ago so not too bad really.
I think that is about the pricepoint where you get most power for money.

What would you guys go for (this thread reminded me) if you wanted a dirt cheap gfx card - a Geforce 4 MX or a FX5200?

Thats a difficult question, if you looks at Digit Life's recent round up a crappy 64-bit 5200 only managed 22fps in UT2003 where as a rocking high quality 128bit version managed 47fps. The same goes for the GF4 MXs. I'd probebly stump for good 5200 as it will at least do directx 8 on hardware.