Mainstream Card

[THIERRY]

Hello Guys,

My partner keeps asking what's a "mainstream graphic card"? I don't know what to answer!
Thanks a lot.
Thierry.

[Lespaul20]

I would say any of the latest cards that Nvidia or ATI offer. I guess it depends on the context in which he/she is asking.

[pam123]

I realize you can't tell you partner to stop being dense so here it is.

It's the card that falls mid-range in price in any general line up.
Usually priced anywhere from $150 - $250, so that leaves out the heavy hitting gamer cards or graphics work station cards.

It has mostly to do with gaming performance.
If you don't game you can dial it down a notch, a 2400 instead of a 2600 Radeon (or one of the lesser 38XX due out later this spring) or an 8400 GeForce instead of the 8600 or 8800 GT.
This will put you at or under the $100 mark, which is still mainstream but not what's usually meant when articles start throwing the term around.


Performance varies with the series, for instance the (then) ATI 9500 and 9600 XT cards were mainstream cards with outstanding performance as was the 4200 from nVidia.
Gamers really got their money's worth .

On the other hand the nVidia 5XXX series were sub-par and ATI/AMD 2XXX have been disappointing.

The ATI/AMD current come back are the 3850 and 3870 cards which fit in nicely price/performance wise.