Although this card is not bad in its own right, it lacks the punch-per-dollar provided by ATI cards in the same price-bracket. But if you're unwilling to leave the NVIDIA camp and are looking for a moderately well-performing budget option, the EVGA GeForce 9800 GT (512MB DDR3 PCI-E) is worth a look.

The Asus EAX1650XT is a good budget option for a Vista upgrade or simply to give new life to a gaming machine while cards supporting DirectX 10 trickle into the market.

This card costs a little more than cards that are based on the standard version of the Radeon X1950 Pro GPU, but it also offers a little more performance than those cards and it also has a video-in port.

While the cooler on this card differs from the norm, nothing else really separates it from the crowd. Its default clock speeds are slow for the price, so if you're looking for an inexpensive gaming card, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Despite its slow showing in the Lost Planet DirectX 10 demonstration, it's still unclear how well this card will be able to handle DirectX 10-based games. But, for current DirectX 9-based games, this card will perform well and its price, along with its game bundle, make it an attractive mid-range option for any Vista-based PC.

All up, this card may be a little expensive considering it doesn't come with any games, but it's a good performer and the supplied DVI-HDMI adapter and the Component cable are useful additions.

While it's not the best performer, the HD 2600 XT is reasonably priced. It doesn't quite stand up to cards that use NVIDIA's 8600 GTS chip, but it outperforms the 8600 GT-based cards that we've tested thus far.

Overall, the EN8600GT, with the OC Gear module, offers a convenient way to overclock and monitor your card's performance, but it costs $50 more than ASUS' regular EN8600GT graphics card. The extra cost, and only very slight performance advantages when overclocking, mean it's worth sticking to the regular EN8600GT instead

Gigabyte has done a great job of making this card run silent. It's not a high-end gaming card, but it will suit those who wish to build a media centre and still hope to play some games.

For mid-range gaming, the P860 is a fast choice. It won't produce super-smooth frame rates in the latest games, but it will produce playable frame rates in most games, and those frame rates will still be better than what most competing 8600 GT-based cards can achieve.

This card will handle any DirectX 9-based game on the market, but it's still not as fast as cards based on NVIDIA's high-end 8800 GPU in DirectX 10-based games. However, DX 10-based games are still playable with this card at resolutions lower than 1920x1200 and is a good value card.

This GPU is one of the best value-for-money options currently out there, but the additional cost of buying this pre-overclocked version may not be worth the few extra frames and the additional heat.