nVidia GeForce 256

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

A step behind ATI’s HD 4870 on price and performance.

Hard to find, and not worth the typical price at all.

Decent power, but bigger, dearer and noisier than the HD 4850.

Still holding its own at this price, but note the HD 4830.

Not the perfect value card it once was, but still worth a look.

On its last legs, it costs as much as faster cards.

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

One of the cheapest Vista SSD notebooks we've seen yet, though we're surprised by the benchmark results.

Fastest PC

The Radeon 7500 is the little brother to the Radeon 8500 and is essentially an enhanced version of the original Radeon card, an example of which was tested in this round-up as a yardstick and included in the performance graphs (pages 50-51). It features the Charisma Engine; ATIs equivalent of the T&L engine found in GeForce-based cards.

Powerful laptops have to be big, bulky and ugly, right? Not necessarily. Samsung's new line of laptops is proving that portability, style and performance are not necessarily mutually exclusive.