Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT

The 9500 GT is basically the cut-off point for true gaming cards. Just $10 above it you'll find the HD 4650, capable of playable frame rates in the demanding Crysis at medium settings; the 9500 GT can't manage this, so from this card down you're looking solely at the media end of the market.

That's not to say it isn't worth considering, though. With a mere 32 stream processors and a 550MHz core clock, coupled with 256MB of memory, it might not be the meatiest card out there, but it will just about play the latest games at low settings - even if that does miss the point of buying a new game.

More importantly, it doesn't require a power input and it will bear most of the brunt when decoding a Blu-ray disc for playback - a major factor for a media-centre PC.

In our tests the ageing, single-core CPU hovered around the 60% mark during the movie, which is around 8-10% better than the 9400 GT - perfectly watchable, in other words.

Unfortunately for Nvidia, though, it's a good deal higher than the 30-40% CPU load of both the ATI media cards, which begs the question: why would you buy the 9500 GT over its more efficient rivals?

And we don't have an answer. It isn't fast enough to seriously consider it a gaming card in any respect - unless you play only retro classics - yet it also isn't as good as the very cheapest card in the group at HD media decoding.

So, all things considered, we'd recommend you save yourself a few dollars and stick with the bargain HD 4350 for your entertainment system.

• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2
• 
  ATI Radeon HD 4650
• 
  ATI Radeon HD 4670
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, still almost on par with ATI's HD 4670
• 
  ATI Radeon HD 4870, why it's our new A-List graphics card
• - Recommended -
  ATI Radeon HD 4850, superb performance without the HD 4870's price tag
• 
  ATI Radeon HD 4830, can't match the 4870 but it's significantly cheaper
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT, toe-to-toe with ATI's HD 4830
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX
• 
  Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ (core 216)
• 
  Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
• 
  ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2
• 
  Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
• 
  ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
• 
  Nvidia GeForce GTX 295
• 
  Nvidia GeForce GTX 285
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO
• 
  ATI Radeon 4550
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT
• - Best Value -
  ATI Radeon HD 4350, best value graphics card at budget prices