ATI gives the integrated graphics world a kick in the arse, John Gillooly feels the vibrations.

We know you want to play games, so we've put 18 PCI Express graphics cards under the microscope to see who really does the job the best.

The X800XT is at the cutting edge of gaming technology at the moment, and no card demonstrates this better than the PowerColor X800XT. It combines a killer price (for a high-end card), excellent performance, and a respectable bundle.

The Excel G736 notebook from Protac is a desktop replacement, and as well as better-than-normal notebook specifications it also comes with the other traditional trapping of a desktop replacement notebook: it's big, it's chunky, and it's heavy.

It’s an odd gambit business-wise: align your own brand with that of another. But for Acer, the one-off team-up with Ferrari to brand and produce the Acer Ferrari 3000 notebook has resulted in a stunning product.

While the epithet 'multimedia PC' used to be bandied about to over-hype any PC in the mid-'90's that was capable of playing music, rudimentary video, and games, the descriptive was overused so much on sub-par PCs that the impact of any real multimedia capabilities was diminished in the wash of pretenders.

Like the MSI X800XT-VTD256E, Sapphire's offering represents bang on average performance. But, unlike MSI, this doesn't offer the feature set to offset the higher price.

The Gigabyte X800 offering is a strange beast. The accompanying package proclaimed it was a X800 XT PE (Platinum Edition), but further investigation found it to be a standard X800 XT.

This card was the second poorest performing X800 XT on show in 3DMark01SE's DirectX 8 tests, with roughly 400 3Dmarks between it and the Gigabyte RX80X256V. But DX8 testing certainly isn't everything these days, and ABIT's card put in a good showing to take fourth in the DirectX 9.0-based 3DMark05, putting it on par with the Labs winning PowerColor X800 XT and GeCube card.

One of the most striking things about Pioneer’s entry this month is the cosmetics: it’s 24hr karaoke bar meets street-racing BMW. And lots of blue LEDs! And these LED’s can get a little annoying – especially the super bright “headlight” LED’s. They shine directly ahead, and at desk height they beam straight into your eyes. There is also a large, illuminated ‘Xfinity’ etched into the front door of the case. Suffice to say this case won’t be to everyone’s taste. But otherwise, the rest of the externals are OK – the top mount houses two of the six total USB ports beneath a tidy flap, and a large power button with a good action.

The Athlon XP 3200+ will probably be the last Barton-core desktop processor to come from AMD before the launch later this year of the Athlon 64, its desktop 64-bit processor.

Finding a good PC or notebook for the family is not as hard as you might think. PC Authority  puts the latest models to the test.