If you're a firm believer in the 'behemoth GPU', Sapphire's Radeon HD 4850 x2 will do little to sway your opinion. While it performed solidly enough in our benchmarks, it failed to match NVIDIA's single-GPU GTX 280 offering. Nevertheless, it remains a good option for any self-respecting Radeon fan with a penchant for monitors.

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.

The Sapphire HD3870 is ATI's next generation of GPUs, superseding the HD2000 series and challenging NVIDIA's 8800 GT cards for a place in the mid-range market.

This is a standard graphics card that's suitable for not-too-serious gaming, and for watching Blu-ray movies.

This is a slightly-better-than mid-range graphics card that's suitable for playing DirectX 9-based games at high resolution and detail settings, and DirectX 10-based games at mid-range resolution and detail settings.

Two GPUs on one card sounds promising in theory, but this card didn't shine in all our tests. It does have four DVI ports though, so if you've always wanted to run four monitors off one PC, then this is the card for you.

For the vast majority of gamers this card is going to be ideal. Those looking for a super powerful graphics card may have to wait or buy one of the high-end options from the previous series, but the MSI GeForce 9600GT is an excellent choice for decent mid-range gaming.

Inno3D's move to overclock this card is nice in theory, but we saw very little improvement in performance. Fortunately there is almost no additional cost for the added speed, so it may be worth buying, especially if you're comfortable about overclocking your own hardware

When judged on its own merits, the Gigabyte GeForce 9800 GTX (GV-NX98X512H-B) is a hard card to fault. However, the emergence of similarly priced dual-GPU cards has taken some of the shine off its performance.

The Gigabyte GTX260 (GV-N26-896H-B) is an impressive high-end graphics card that packs quite a wallop. However, it's also a little overpriced and failed to impress in our DX9 benchmarks.

Despite some mixed benchmark results, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 x2 remains an appropriately high-end offering that will satisfy most enthusiasts. However, after the stellar performance of recent ATI cards we can't help but feel a little disappointed.

If you’re a stickler for innovation, ATI’s ‘double-or-nothing’ approach is unlikely to tickle your fancy, but it remains a powerful performer. On the other hand, its benchmark results were not as impressive as we would have liked from a top-end graphics card.