Gigabyte GeForce 6800 GT VPU (GV-N68T256DH)

This card impressed us on two fronts. Its cooling system is among the first we have seen to have its fan located on the top side of the card instead of directly on the GPU itself. It sits on a huge heat sink, which means there are two large heat sinks on this card, and the top-side heat sink is connected to the main GPU heat sink via heat pipes. These heat sinks also cool the memory at the same time. This arrangement does mean that the cooling fan is prone to hot air from CPU and chipset fans blowing in its direction, so a proper exhaust at the rear of your system should be in place.

The second impressive feature of this card is its price tag. This card should be snapped up by anyone looking for a high-end card to fit into an AGP 8X system. It means you will not have to upgrade to PCIe for at least a few years.

Its GeForce 6800GT chip propelled it to very good frame rates, with Doom 3's most taxing settings switched on.

Don't expect too much bundled software. Apart from the V-tuner2 fan and clock management utility, you only get a software DVD player and no games.