The ATI Radeon X1650XT GPU in this HIS card is on steroids and will provide good performance for most current games. It's a good stop-gap solution if you need a new mid-range graphics card, but don't have the patience to wait until DirectX 10-capable ones are released.

The Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro isn't the hottest card on the market, but it's a good budget card if you won't be playing the latest games. The X1650 Pro has been Windows Vista certified and will let you run the Aero interface in Windows Vista.

While the basic 7900 GS has some good features, it's not quite strong enough to compete with the likes of the Sapphire X1950 Pro. Having said that, the 7900 GS is quick, good value, and has plenty of overclocking potential.

The Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro is a fast, efficient card, and a worthy adversary to heavily overclocked products such as the Gainward 7900 GS Golden Sample. There are better alternatives, but this is a decent offering.

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.

While benchmarks will show little differences between this card and the top NVIDIA card, the 7900GTX, the X1900XTX's architecture gives it a little more longevity and should perform well until it's time to switch to a true DirectX 10 capable card. The only downfall is that this is still an expensive card and if you think you'll be doing an upgrade in the mid, rather than the long-term, you may wish to opt for one of the new cards from either manufacturer that sits at a better price point.

Although this card is expensive, it's still an excellent component for any enthusiast's computer. If price isn't so much of an issue, but enough to not warrant purchasing an 8800, this may very well suit your needs.

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.

We'll have to wait until next year for the really juicy developments in graphics card technology. But for now, the Radeon X1950 XTX's improved memory bandwidth is enough to secure it a comfortable victory over the GForce 7900 GTX.

This Gigabyte card runs quietly, and has adequate power for the current crop of games. It does struggle at higher resolutions with high detail settings enabled.

CrossFire can definitely keep pace with NVIDIA's SLI in most games and surpasses it in others, but it is still physically clumsy compared to SLI.

If you don't play high end games, then the PowerColor X1900XTX isn't for you. For serious gamers it could be a worthwhile purchase, though an expensive one.