This video card guide will show you what cards are available in your price range and how they perform in today's PC games. If you're just starting to learn about video cards, we recommend that you check out GameSpot's Ten Things to Know Before Buying a Video Card guide to get a few basic buying tips before jumping into the roundup.
We've divided the video cards by price into four categories: high-end, performance, mainstream, and budget. Our budget list includes all the current-generation video cards available for $100 or less. The mainstream group includes cards that retail for up to $200. Bump the price range up to $200-$400 to get to our performance cards. And finally, we have our extremely broad high-end category that includes everything over $400 that covers both single cards and dual-card setups. We've focused on current-generation GeForce 7 series and Radeon X1K series video cards in this roundup.
High-End Video Cards
You should consider buying a high-end video card or dual-card configuration if you want to play your games at the highest resolutions with the highest image-quality settings. We're talking resolutions that start at 1600x1200 (4:3) and 1680x1050 (widescreen) and image-quality settings that have the best antialiasing (smoothes out jagged lines) and anisotropic filtering (keeps textures looking good at all distances and angles) settings enabled by default. You can easily get away with buying a far less expensive card if you have a small monitor, prefer lower screen resolutions for whatever reason, or don't need extremely high image-quality settings.
Don't go high-end with the sole purpose of trying to "future-proof" your system. Inexperienced buyers will often choose the most expensive cards when putting together a system with the belief that investing in better parts now will pay off in the long run by delaying the inevitable hardware upgrade by several years. The problem with that approach is that a computer isn't a timeless item like good cookware or a classic coat, where it makes sense to pay extra for quality. Video cards double in performance every 18 to 24 months, and new cards also support a constantly growing feature set that can produce advanced graphic effects that older cards simply can't do. If you buy a $500 video card now, there's a good chance you'll be able to buy a card that's just as powerful and can produce better-looking graphics for $250 two years from now. Go for a high-end card or dual-card setup only if you require the best image quality at extremely high resolutions, but understand that top-of-the-line today becomes average in two years and ready for the trash bin in four.
Note that dual-video card SLI and CrossFire configurations have added costs beyond the price of the cards. The dual-card setups require specialized motherboards and a big power supply capable of delivering enough juice to all the components in the system.
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2
Street Price: $535 to $650
Core: 48 pixel pipes (24 per GPU), 500MHz
Memory: 1GB (512MB per GPU), 600MHz
Recommended Power Supply: 450W
The GeForce 7950 GX2 is Nvidia's current flagship card. It has two graphics-processing units and a unique double-board stack design that requires only one PCI Express slot. It's undoubtedly the fastest single card available by virtue of its dual GPUs, but it's also the most expensive.
ATI Radeon X1950 XTX
Estimated Street Price: $449
Core: 16 pixel pipelines (48 pixel shaders), 650MHz
Memory: 512MB, 1GHz
Recommended Power Supply: 450W
Set to ship September 14, the Radeon X1950 XTX replaces the Radeon X1900 XTX as ATI's top video card. The new card actually has the same core clock speed as its predecessor, but it now supports fast 1GHz GDDR4 memory, which will help feed extremely high game resolutions. The card also features a new quieter cooling unit.
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX
Street Price: $450 to $500
Core: 24 pixel pipelines, 700/650MHz
Memory: 512MB, 800MHz
Recommended Power Supply: 450W
The GeForce 7900 GTX is Nvidia's best single-GPU card. It's a solid performer that matches up well against ATI's Radeon X1950 XTX.
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX
Street Price: $350 to $600
Core: 16 pixel pipelines (48 pixel shaders), 650MHz
Memory: 512MB, 775MHz
Recommended Power Supply: 450W
The Radeon X1900 XTX won't be with us much longer, with the X1950 XTX arriving soon. It's still a good performer, and you'll probably find decent pricing as retailers race to unload inventory. However, the X1900 XTX is also one of the loudest cards we've ever tested, which explains why ATI gave the X1950 a new cooler design.
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 Quad-SLI
Street Price: $1,070 to $1,300
Core: 96 pixel pipes (24 per GPU), 500MHz
Memory: 2GB (512MB per GPU), 600MHz
Recommended Power Supply: See site
Four GPUs sounds like a lot of performance, but Nvidia is still working on getting the most out of its dual GeForce 7950 GX2 Quad-SLI offering. For the most part, you'll only see significant performance gains at extremely high resolutions and in OpenGL games. If you love Quake 4 and have a 30-inch widescreen monitor, Quad-SLI might be right for you.
ATI Radeon X1950 XTX CrossFire
Estimated Street Price: $900
Core: 32 pixel pipelines (48 pixel shaders per GPU), 650MHz
Memory: 1GB (512MB per GPU), 1GHz
Recommended Power Supply: See site
Combine a Radeon X1950 XTX card with a Radeon X1950 XTX CrossFire Edition card to get ATI's fastest dual-card configuration. The Radeon X1950 XTX CrossFire Edition will ship at the same time as the regular version, September 14.
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX SLI
Street Price: $900 to $1,000
Core: 48 pixel pipelines (24 per GPU), 700/650MHz
Memory: 1GB (512MB per GPU), 800MHz
Recommended Power Supply: See site
The GX2 may have two GPUs on a single card, but the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI is still the fastest Nvidia dual-GPU setup around, thanks to higher graphics-core speeds. However, the GX2 is only a little slower but a lot more affordable. The GTX SLI is faster, but you'll pay a hefty premium for that extra performance.
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GT SLI
Street Price: $500 to $600
Core: 48 pixel pipelines (24 per GPU), 450MHz
Memory: 512MB (256MB per GPU), 660MHz
Recommended Power Supply: See site
Single GeForce 7900 GT cards retail for $300 or less, but you can slap two together in SLI mode to get a high-end contender. We've listed the standard core and memory speeds, but several video card manufacturers offer the GeForce 7900 GT with slightly overclocked core and memory speeds.
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro CrossFire
Street Price: $556-598
Core: 24 pixel pipelines (36 pixel shaders per GPU), 575MHz
Memory: 512MB, 1380MHz
Recommended Power Supply: See site
The Radeon X1950 Pro is ATI's answer to Nvidia's GeForce 7900 GS. Unlike past ATI CrossFire implementations, the Radeon X1950 Pro doesn't require a specific CrossFire master card and CrossFire-ready card pairing to run in dual-card mode. There's only one type of Radeon X1950 Pro card, and you can place two of them on a CrossFire-compatible motherboard to enable dual-card graphics. ATI has also replaced the CrossFire's unsightly card-to-card external cable connection with an elegant internal connection similar to Nvidia's internal SLI link.
What video card upgrades are you considering? Share your personal video card selection philosophy in the comments below!GameSpot's Video Card Roundup 2006
This video card guide will show you what cards are available in your price range and how they perform in today's PC games.
