ATI Radeon 7000: closeouts @ Office Depot

[lightspeed]

Hi all,


Just wanted to let you know that I have heard from several sources saying the Office Depot is now running a close-out sale on the (Built By) ATI Radeon 7000 series.  

Apparently, they are still officially priced @ $59 their website, but ring up for $14.04 at most stores.

I have a PCI Radeon 7200 with TV-Out, and it provide more than enough oomph for MAME tasks.

Just FYI

[MilitiaMan]

Hi all,


Just wanted to let you know that I have heard from several sources saying the Office Depot is now running a close-out sale on the (Built By) ATI Radeon 7000 series.  

Apparently, they are still officially priced @ $59 their website, but ring up for $14.04 at most stores.

I have a PCI Radeon 7200 with TV-Out, and it provide more than enough oomph for MAME tasks.

Just FYI

No such luck for me ... it rang up $59.99. Then I looked like a complete @$$ when I told them I really didn't need it anyway.  

A classic case of ..... YMMV.

MM

[lightspeed]

Ack.  Sorry about that - apparently, its a hit and miss, and only covers the AGP cards... I would keep checking, based on the site below, at least some people have had success.

http://www.resellerratings.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=68191

[AlanS17]

Ohhh... I want one. It would be better than my Matrox G400.

[AlanS17]

Update:

Well after reading about this last night I decided I needed to get down to Office Depot quick. So this morning I gave my boss an excuse to go down there and I was off!

Picked up all the office supplies for the office and walked over to the video cards to check it out. Well, they didn't have the AGP version in stock - only PCI. So I went to the service desk and had them look it up in the back.

They came back with one, and I asked for them to run a price check. As he was running it, the guy said, "Yeah we had a special on Nvidia's a while back for $25."

Then the price came back and I knew what it was without even having to look. The guy's eyes got all huge and this big smile came over his face. Then he clutched the thing to his chest!! It was a fleeting moment, though, as he realized I was buying the last one in stock. *sniffles*

He quickly ran a check on other stores and noticed I bought the last one in all of south Texas (which is a pretty big place). Oh well. I got mine. I'm happy.

This is proof that this web site can save people money. I bought the ATI Radeon 7000 AGP for $15.20 after tax!!!

[lightspeed]

Well, I am glad it worked for someone.  I worked in a retail store once - typically, they would get store-wide price updates via modem each night and would print out a list of tags that needed changing.

I would guess that if Office Depot corporate set a new price recently, individual stores may take some time to reflect it -  a pricecheck would probably reflect the new cost.    Can anyone else confirm - based on the resellerratings board and Alan's experience, the cheaper price seems to be in effect.

[HeadRusch]

Cheapest I can find online on pricewatch is like $31 bucks.....which isn't 15, but its still dirt cheap for quality video.

The 3D isnt' the best, thats for sure...but its certainly reasonable if you're playing games at 640x480 on a TV screen...

[nighthawk2099]

is this the same card ?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?sku=c261-6003

[nighthawk2099]

*hello*

[lightspeed]

Not exactly the same.  Two differences:

The TigerDirect card is 64 mb, the Office Depot is 32 (should not make much of a difference for MAME purposes).

The TigerDirect card is manufactured by an company other than ATI (Connect3D, in this case).   The Office Depot card is a "Built by ATI" retail box.

 Basically, Connect3D buys Radeon chipsets from ATI and puts them in their own board.   Many MAMErs avoid these cards as the secondary components contained in them, such as the TV-out module, may be substandard.    This may result on poor image quality on TVs.

ATI also manufactures their own cards, using high-quality TV-OUT components.    Among the BYOAC boards, ATI-manufactured boards appear to be the preference for this reason.  You can tell on any retail box which type of card you're getting, either "Built by ATI" (good) or "Powered by ATI" (may or may not contain substandard components.).   Usually, the "Powered By" cards are cheaper.

Note that nVidia does not make thier own graphics boards, but always sells chipsets to third parties.   Some of the nVidia cars you can buy will provide exceptional TV output, others substandard, depending on the reseller.     Its usually a matter of you get what you pay for.

ATI-made boards are preferred simply because they offer a high standard for TV out, not because the Radeon is an inherently better graphics chip than the GeForce, etc.    Since nVidia does not make their own graphics cards, they do not have quality control over the TV-out components that the resellers use.