Although it's a step down from the 8800 GTX, this Gigabyte 8800 GTS is superior in many ways to anything from the previous generation of cards and if you want something that will last you into the Vista era there's little other choice.

There's no doubt this is the best card on the market. Every feature is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition from ATI, at least until they release their own DirectX 10 capable card, the R600. The real question is whether to buy this card, or wait until competition brings the prices down and game developers actually start making games that utilise the new improved features.

This is by far the hottest card on the market and will continue to do the job well into the future. If you want the best performance then this is the card to get.

The ASUS EN8800GTX AQUATANK didn't produce stellar results in our tests and so we recommend buying ASUS' regular non-water cooled 768MB GTX instead, which will leave enough room in a PC case for an SLI solution, too.

Although Zotac is a lesser known brand, the card's performance is on par with the competition. We tested and used the Zotac 8800GTS 320MB over a period of time and it remained stable and performed well. We were also impressed with the environmentally conscious packaging.

We don't like the EN8800GTS' large packaging, but it's a reliable card, with a good games bundle and a competitive asking price.

The XFX PV-T80F-SHF9 is a great performer in current DirectX 9-based games and should go just as well when DirectX 10-based games are released. A high price and a poor bundle are the only downsides.

It's the most powerful card on the market and trumps its closest competitors, but it's also the most expensive. If you want the best frame rate possible from a single card though, this is the one to buy.

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

You can forget the old GTS models because this new card, based on the G92 GPU, is a far better choice, even if it has some limitations.