Nvidia’s latest graphics cards and chips throw down the gauntlet to Intel and AMD. Go behind the scenes with this guide to the big technologies including PhysX, CUDA, and games like Far Cry 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky.

AMD/ATI and its partners made quite a splash with the recent release of the 5 series GPUs, and is creating a lot of excitement about what future iterations of the cards will be able to do

Breathe some life into your old PC in time for a Vista upgrade with these budget AGP video cards.

The fastest card we’ve seen, but the performance boost doesn’t justify the price.

In the workstation graphics market, the name 3Dlabs carries considerable weight, and its Wildcat III series of OpenGL cards continues to be dominating in the high-end workspace. However, in the mid-range sector, NVIDIAs Quadro2 and Quadro4, and ATIs FireGL 8800 have made serious inroads. The new Wildcat VP870 looks set to redress the balance, thanks to a brand-new GPU that takes programmability to a new level.

PC gamers are among those most likely to benefit from any improvement in raw performance, so does Windows 7 bring any glad tidings for 3D action aficionados?

PC gamers are among those most likely to benefit from any improvement in raw performance, so does Windows 7 bring any glad tidings for 3D action aficionados?

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has put together a supercomputer that's based around a cluster of graphics processing units (GPUs)

The fastest single-GPU card we've seen, but it can't shake ATI in the price war.

Nvidia’s card is fast, but ATI’s is still faster.

Those readers who are familiar with the culture of the hard-core gamer/overclocker, will know exactly the meaning behind the name of this card.

This card is the same card as the Bravura Evil Master II, but without the retail extras thrown in. The card itself is a fairly plain-looking affair - a simple green PCB (printed circuit board) with a small cooling fan and heatsink over the GPU, and an array of RAM modules absent of the large RAM heatsinks now commonplace on the NVIDIA models.

Something’s wrong with DirectX 10 gaming when even top end cards are struggling with the latest games.

Can’t handle gaming, and beaten by cheaper media cards too.

Vista felt sluggish, bloated and slovenly, but has Microsoft made Windows 7 any faster for those who crave the ultimate performance from their PC? Here are the benchmark results.

There are a lot of GeForce3 cards on the market at the moment, with not an incredible amount of difference between them. This is indicative of the somewhat heavy-handed tactics of NVIDIA when setting down reference designs.

A capable card – decent performance without a high price.

It’s fast, but not quite fast enough for the huge price.

An immensely powerful card, tempered by flaky drivers.

The cheapest way to get OS X, but it has all of the MacBook Pro’s shortcomings and more of its own