Lab

Graphics cards

Until recently, the graphics card market was a bit of a one-horse race, but the past few frenzied months have blown things wide open again. The unveiling of ATi's dual-processor Radeon HD 3870 X2 has given Nvidia's GeForce 8800 series cards some much-needed competition at the enthusiast end, while the battle for the mid-range is more competitive now than at any time in recent memory.

Both camps have DirectX 10-compatible cards across the board, from budget Media Center offerings right up to huge gaming monsters, so the time is finally right to put the two line-ups through their paces. We've rounded up every ATi and Nvidia chipset from the current generation of cards, along with a cutting-edge test rig and some of the most demanding games of the moment.

Rather than focus on individual cards, we've concentrated on the chipsets and each one is dissected in the feature table. We don't restrict our awards to specific cards or models because there are simply too many manufacturers and minor variations to make that feasible. Instead, we round up what you should be looking for, from which brands specialise in overclocked, silent or customised models, to how to customise your own cards.

We also look at the various technologies emerging in the graphics card market. If you want to know what GeForce Boost and Hybrid CrossFire mean to the performance of your PC, turn to p100, where we explain what the introductions from Nvidia and ATi actually do. Finally, we examine thecurrent state of CrossFire and SLI to see whether they're great ways to boost your frame rates or a road to frustration and missed potential.

It's an exciting time in the world of 3D graphics, and an uncertain one, so if you're in the market for a new card, the following pages will help you make that critical buying decision.