Nvidia GeForce GTX 280

Nvidia's top-end card is fast, but our trawl around online retailers revealed that it costs nearly the same as the ageing dual-GPU 9800 GX2.

You could look at that as progress, with the newest cards taking the price-point place of their predecessors while improving on performance - but, unfortunately for Nvidia and the GTX 280, in the real world it fails to make the grade.

The cobbled together GX2 is a monster of a card, but this newer GTX 280 requires the same six- and eight-pin power connectors to get it running. It's also the same old 65nm fabrication process, and with a 602MHz core clock, 240 stream processors and only a minor boost in shader speed, it was never going to blow the GX2 out of the water.

But we expected it to at least try. In the highest test, in which it should excel, the GTX 280 falls behind the GX2: 24fps to the GX2's 28fps in Crysis at very high settings; 36fps to the GX2's 40fps in our high Call of Juarez test. Our other tests are too simple to really test the top-end cards - 90fps in Far Cry 2 and 97fps in Call of Duty 4 show how effortlessly they brush them aside.

It isn't a huge discrepancy; both cards will get you gaming at huge resolution, but the GX2 has the slight edge in every respect except size.

But the biggest problem is ATI's X2 cards: once the drivers are sorted, we expect the new HD 4850 X2 to be close to this performance at $70 less; on the other hand, if you're really willing to spend such a small fortune on a graphics card, you may as well stretch to $747 and buy the table-topping HD 4870 X2.

• 
  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
• 
  ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
• 
  Nvidia GeForce GTX 295
• 
  Nvidia GeForce GTX 285
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT
• 
  ATI Radeon 4550
• 
  Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT
• - Best Value -
  ATI Radeon HD 4350, best value graphics card at budget prices