nVidia GeForce 256

A little over a year has passed since releasing the GeForce 6800, and right on cue, NVIDIA’s new chip is hitting town in the form of the GeForce 7800 GTX.

Nvidia’s long-awaited 3D kit finally arrives and when it works, it’s every bit as good as we’d hoped it would be.

Both graphics card giants have unleashed powerful new additions to their ranks recently, and their battle for supremacy is hotter than ever. We put the new arrivals through their paces

It was tough deciding an overall winner for this Labs. There can be no doubt - if you're looking for brute speed, then the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and RADEON 9800 PRO are the obvious choices, but we're not prepared to make a winner out of a graphics card that costs close to $1,000. For this reason, we've chosen the card we believe delivers the best balance of performance and price - which turns out to be the GeForce FX 5600.

ATI does it again with its latest GPU, combining superb performance with a reasonable price

Intel has been banging on about Centrino 2 lately, so it was good to finally get a chance to test the claims courtesy of a spanking new mid-range Centrino 2 M51 Va courtesy of ASUS.

Fast but disappointing card that delivers only small benefits over its predecessors for a significant price premium.

Video and almost decent gaming at fantastic prices

An affordable way to get excellent frame rates.

The 9600 GT redefines the mainstream graphics market, offering high-end power at a mid-range price. At this price we want one.

Seriously powerful mobile gaming grunt with all the bling, from Dell. Yep, Dell.

The Quadro FX3000 is based on the same NV35 core that powers the latest GeForce FX 5900 cards, but with a few new additions to cater to the professional market. Compared to the older Quadro FX2000, which was based on the NV30, or GeForce FX5800, the FX3000 has double the memory, at 256MB, as well as a 256-bit memory interface, giving double the theoretical graphics bandwidth, hitting just over 27GB/s. It also supports other features from the NV35, including a 128-bit floating-point precision graphics pipeline, 128-bit colour, 12-bit sub-pixel accuracy, 16x full-scene anti-aliasing, 3D volumetric textures, and of course support for all the latest OpenGL, DirectX and NVIDIA’s own Cg graphics language versions.

A minor performance boost isn’t enough to fend off its rivals.

Cheap and functional, but rivals perform better.

A reworking of an old card from Palit, but it’s not quite enough to beat the 9600 GT

It’s incredibly powerful, but recent releases offer similar performance for significantly less money.

A popular and fast top-end option, but it’s losing its grip to new competition from both sides.

A wonderful return to form, leaving the disappointment of the 8600 GT as just a distant memory.

Superseded by both Nvidia’s new 9600 card and ATi’s excellent HD 3800 series