Best graphics card for £175?

[Tarinder]

Best graphics card for £175?

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=7255

Whaddya think?

[Fabula]

Agreed. I want one!

But I think I'll wait until the mid-priced next G80 or R600s come out in a few months. Pointless getting a dx9 card when I will be wanting to play Crysis!

[MSIC]

Be careful Hexus.
I like (and use) Scan as much as the next, but you run a serious risk of becoming one big advert, and losing all credibility.
Reviewing something you've been sent - fair enough.
Simply saying "oh what a good price" cheapens you.

[Tarinder]

MSIC,

I've purposely not alluded to Scan by name or made any overt references to them in the short article. It's a hyperlink that you can choose to click on to. The purpose of the piece was to highlight the value for money offered by the competitve pricing of that SKU.

You're absolutely free to shop wherever you'd like to. The same SKU is available from other online vendors for roughly the same price, so it's no 'special' or time-limited (other than finite supply by ATI/AMD) offer from Scan.

We're planning on getting a sample in, so this, effectively, was a precursor to that.

[Rys]

Further, it was a well-judged price/perf statement based on understood and already available performance data, from R580 SKUs we've looked at in extreme depth already. Pointing out a price/perf bargain for our readers if we know what we're talking about is probably a good thing on balance, right?

[ExceededGoku]

Be careful Hexus.
I like (and use) Scan as much as the next, but you run a serious risk of becoming one big advert, and losing all credibility.
Reviewing something you've been sent - fair enough.
Simply saying "oh what a good price" cheapens you.

lol... who wouldn't want to advertise a good price like that? Would you prefer not to be told?

[MSIC]

Pointing out a price/perf bargain for our readers if we know what we're talking about is probably a good thing on balance, right?

Yes it is, but i think there is a more correct time and place to do this.
For example, Hexus Bargains is a suitable arena.
In my opinion, front page of a news site is not.
I accept that you didnt mention Scan by name, but the link is there.

Sorry, maybe i'm over-reacting about this, but your lack of bias and journalistic integrity mean alot to me, and I don't want that to be soiled either in fact or by implication/suggestion.

[Nikumba]

Hopefully they will bring a single slot version out

[redlight]

I thought I was reading an article on a graphics card until I hovered over the link and it was to Scan. Ruined the article as now it just a hidden advert for Scan which of course the the average joe will click on and think this the only place to get them from. Now that is just wrong.

[jackvdbuk]

if it was 'average person' they wouldnt be buyign a gfx card costing that much and they will be in pc world buying a brand new pc.. bit silly dotn ya think?

[redlight]

if it was 'average person' they wouldnt be buyign a gfx card costing that much and they will be in pc world buying a brand new pc.. bit silly dotn ya think?

No Hexus was silly linking to Scan maybe their not so unbiased after all and even sillier is knocking Pc World again and again when most of us have been there for the bargains that they occasionally have.. I use Scan a fair bit but I do not expect to be pushed in that direction.

[kempez]

MSIC is right, especially after the debacle that was made over Alienware

[Tarinder]

So linking to an etailer and thus showing that the SKU isn't just vapourware is a bad idea?

North American readers are linked in to newegg.

The fact remains that this is an excellent value for money card this side of £200, no matter where you buy it from.

[Rys]

I thought I was reading an article on a graphics card until I hovered over the link and it was to Scan. Ruined the article as now it just a hidden advert for Scan which of course the the average joe will click on and think this the only place to get them from. Now that is just wrong.

We've prefixed review pieces on the front page with "HEXUS.reviews" for over a year now and probably closer to 2, precisely to let people know what is and what isn't an official HEXUS review. This piece wasn't (because it's not), so we didn't

The fact remains we have an active and open relationship with all of our partners, including Scan and many others, so if we link to one of them every now and again to try and get you folks educated about a good deal, then we will. It just so happens that in this case Scan, because of scan2hexus, is the best place to pick up what's already pretty bargain happy. Our bad for trying to help you guys out, which is all we ever do and is the reason we've put our lives into the place since day 1!

[kalniel]

I have this card

It's nice, though I don't think it really threatens the X1900XTX - the 256mb ram is a limitation compared to the latter. For whatever reason (different thread dispatcher?) the 256mb ATI cards are slower than their 512mb brethren.

However, this is a very nice card - especially when you play Oblivion with HDR at 4xAA and 8x High quality (angle independent) AF.

Cooler isn't all that bad at all either - it's never got to full speed on anything yet and ramps up pretty slowly (without changing speed too often either - changes of speed are actually more noisy than a constant speed it seems.)

CD comes with cat 6.10, but the card doesn't seem to be supported by the new 6.11s for some reason. Might need to play with the drivers a bit more.

[MSIC]

We've prefixed review pieces on the front page with "HEXUS.reviews" for over a year now and probably closer to 2, precisely to let people know what is and what isn't an official HEXUS review. This piece wasn't (because it's not), so we didn't

The fact remains we have an active and open relationship with all of our partners, including Scan and many others, so if we link to one of them every now and again to try and get you folks educated about a good deal, then we will. It just so happens that in this case Scan, because of scan2hexus, is the best place to pick up what's already pretty bargain happy. Our bad for trying to help you guys out, which is all we ever do and is the reason we've put our lives into the place since day 1!

I can see your point here. And I also accept that your intentions were honourable, pointing out a bargain from a good etailer.

I suppose that i made an assumption of Hexus being an independant and un-biased editorial news/review website, however I have just checked out your 'About Us' page, and you do not claim to be either of those, so fair enough.

In my profession we have to be not only impartial but at all times seen to be so.

Again, I genuinely am only interested in the ongoing development and betterment of Hexus, and this is not a 'let's have a go' argument.

Sorry for any bad feeling.