Video Card

Choosing your graphics card may be the most difficult decision when it comes to upgrading or building a new computer. The reason being, there is just so many video cards out there. Not to worry though. We've cut through all of the bull and will provide you with a concise overview of what you should look for in a graphics card as well as our opinion of the best graphics cards on the market.

As with CPUs there are two main players in the graphics card market, NVIDIA and ATI. Two choices, seems pretty easy doesn't it? But, this is about as far as "easy" goes. You may have noticed that while looking for the GeForce 6800 Ultra or the Radeon X800 that there are about a hundred different graphics cards all claiming to be it. The reason is NVIDIA doesn't actually make graphics cards. They design the technology and manufacture the chips that are used in the video cards. They then sell this technology to third party manufacturers who make the actual graphics cards. ATI does the same thing with the exception that they do make their own graphics cards, which are sold only in the U.S. and Canada.

Now that we have that cleared up, who makes the better chips? The truth is that the technology is actually rather comparable in the ultra high end cards. In my opinion NVIDIA has the edge with the GeForce 6800 Ultra right now, but depending on the test or the game you are running the Radeon X800 may have the upper hand in some applications.

It actually wasn't all that long ago when AGP technology was the new kid on the block and everyone was excited about the possibilities it could offer. Now the AGP slot has to contend with the younger brother of the PCI slot, PCI Express or PCIe. So what's the difference? In a nutshell, PCI Express is faster.

PCI Express will have the greatest impact in the future. Currently there aren't many games that require 4 times the bandwidth to operate at the highest settings. However, you can be sure that developers will welcome this new technology and I'm sure they have already begun designing the next generation games that will take full advantage of PCI Express.

So which should you go with? If you are upgrading your computer and don't want to drop a bundle on a new motherboard with a PCI Express slot than stick with an AGP card. Both NVIDIA and ATI have released their top end cards for AGP and PCIe. If you are building a new gaming computer or completely overhauling your old gaming machine you may want to consider going the way of PCI Express. Even if you don't have $600 to drop on the new GeForce 6800 Ultra, there are some moderately priced PCIe cards that will run any game out there.