Labs

This small graphics card is dominated by its big passive heatsink, which cools its electronics without the need for a whirring fan and leaves it completely silent in operation, adding nothing to whatever existing noise your PC makes. Because of this it's ideal for media centre PCs, where 3D gaming isn't a priority but you don't want fan noise interrupting your movies.

Like all the ATI Radeon cards, this one comes with an HDMI adaptor for its single DVI port. It has an onboard audio controller, too, so you can output surround sound audio through an HDMI lead to your TV or surround sound amplifier. Again, this is all ideal for use in a living room PC.

It is, however, rather hopeless when it comes to playing modern games. The 2400XT only managed 9.2 frames per second in our Call of Duty 2 test. We reduced the resolution to 1024x768 and disabled anti-aliasing, but even then it could only deliver a slightly jerky 19.6fps. However, in combination with our test PC's fast dual core processor it was powerful enough to play HD Blu-ray video smoothly. At this price it's a good buy for video playback, but gamers will need to spend more to get acceptable results.