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Christmas is almost upon us and with the impending release of Half Life 2 not
too far off and other DirectX 9 games around the corner, you may well be considering
getting a new graphics card. Or perhaps you are just looking for the best value
for money card to put in your budget gaming machine.
Either way, in this round up, we have eight new graphics cards on test. These
cards range from the low to the very top of the range and between them, represent
a good spread of the graphics chipsets currently available on the market.
We have looked at the following cards:
- Terratec Mystify 5200
- Terratec Mystify 5600 PRO
- Sparkle GeForce FX 5600
- Sapphire Radeon 9600 PRO Atlantis Ultimate Edition
- Asus Radeon 9600XT
- Gainward 5900 FX Powerpack! Ultra/1300 TV/DVI
- Sparkle Geforce FX 5900 Platinum
- Asus Radeon 9800XT
Making the most out of this round up.
This review is split up into pages for a reason, as most people aren't going
to want to read all of them. What is important to us, and to you, is that you
read what is relevant to you. So here is a brief summary of what is on what
page.
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Introduction, Choosing the right card for you.. |
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Factors that affect graphics card performance - what makes a good graphics
card? |
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Description of the testing system and benchmarks run. |
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Specification table of cards with summary of performance and value for
money rating. |
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Table showing the bundled goods with each card. |
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3dMark 01, 3dMark 03, AquaMark Benchmarks on low and high end machine. |
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Benchmarks to show the performance impact of Anti-Aliasing. |
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Grand Theft Auto 4 and Serious Sam 2 benchmarks. |
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Unreal Tournament 2003 benchmarks. |
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Conclusions and card summaries. |
Choosing the right card for you..
Before deciding what graphics card to buy, it is worth looking at your whole
system and weighing up how much performance increase a new graphics card might
give you. You may find that your money better spent on a new CPU instead. Because
we realise not everyone has the latest and greatest at their fingertips, we
have tested at both 1.6ghz and 3.2ghz. This will help give a fair idea of performance
in most systems.
Without a doubt, the biggest factor in choosing a graphics card is budget.
Although we have looked around to find the best prices we can, it is still a
good idea to shop around. A general recommendation is to buy mid-range cards
as they offer the very best value for money and due to the normally higher yields,
are more available.
Most cards come with 3 year warranties, this is a fair amount of time for sending
back faulty goods. If your card dies after the 3 years, maybe that's fates way
of telling you it's time to sell your other kidney.
No matter if you spend £60 or £600, we all want to feel like we
are getting good value for money and most companies will try and collect a good
bundle of software and accessories for us. But we also understand that a lot
of people don't care about this and just want the cheapest price possible, so
look out for OEM versions of the cards shown.
Due the absolutely crazy naming systems and countless variety of cards now
available, it's very easy to think you are buying one product when you are actually
getting another, make sure you check the clock speeds on the box to see if they
match our specs table.
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