Top 5 Graphic Cards in the Market
February 5, 2008
With so many high end games coming for the PC, the need for a graphics card which can support all these latest games is becoming a craze for all PC gamers. The main thing that any gamer will want is that any game which he is playing should run smoothly on his PC without any glitches. This can be achieved by spending some amount of money and buying a graphics card that can run almost any latest high end game without any glitches. The latest in graphics cards uses the PCI Express interface which is far better than the age old AGP interface due to faster speed and performance. The industry adoption of the PCI Express interface for graphics card was much faster than expected. As a result, the number of graphics cards featuring the AGP interface has dramatically dropped. For this reason, this list contains only PCI Express based graphics cards.
1. ATI Radeon X1950 XTX
Imagine games with hyper realistic light blooms, lifelike skin textures, and silky smooth hair. That’s what it’s like on ATI’s fastest and most flexible 3D graphics processor. The ATI Radeon X1950 is based on the ATI Radeon X1950 chipset. This card is installed with a RAM of 512mb. This card is fast enough at lower resolutions but at higher resolutions it becomes slower enough. This card has a top-of-the-line performance from a single GPU. In addition to this you can also add more power by using a second board in a CrossFire setup. The price tag of $359 is high enough but the features and games supported by it are a good deal. Below is the list of specifications,
2. XFX GeForce 8800 GTX
The XFX GeForce 8800 GTX is the latest one that has entered the market and is the first card which has a support for the latest DirectX 10. This card has an incredible speed and a RAM of 768mb. Developed by nVidia this card is one of the fastest graphic cards ever built till date. As mentioned earlier, it is built to support Windows Vista’s DirectX 10 API. However, this card being the fastest among today’s graphic cards has the highest price tag of $589 which indeed is a lot of money. This card also requires two power connectors. Below is the list of specifications,
3. Asus EN 7900 GS Top
This is another graphic card based on the PCI Express interface and is one of the most widely used graphic cards due to great performance and a low price tag. Based on the nVidia chipset the Asus EN 7900 GS Top card is a factory overclocked card and comes with a full copy of the game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, and a three-year warranty. It has a price tag of $169 which is a good deal. The Asus EN 7900 GS Top graphics card features more advanced technology and superior performance. Equipped with the prominent GeForce 7900 GS GPU and fastest DDR3, ASUS EN7900GS TOP performs up to 20% faster than Generic GF7900GS series. Not only can ASUS EN7900GS TOP users fully exploit innovative graphics technologies such as NVIDIA® CineFX 4.0 engine, nView, UltraShadow II technologies from NVIDIA, but also combined with unique ASUS innovations such as SPLENDID for intelligent video enhancement and interactive gaming features, the all-new ASUS card delivers the ultimate in computer visual enjoyment. Below is the list of specifications,
4. XFX GeForce 7600 GT XXX Edition
The XFX GeForce 7600 GT currently is a widely used card and many gamers are buying this card because of the low price and good performance. Due to its good performance and a reasonable price I strongly recommend this dual DVI-out card for all the hard core PC gamers. With a price tag of $139 it surely has a great advantage over other graphic cards. The GeForce 7600 GT only needs a single slot cooling solution making it an option to small form factor (SFF) PCs and those who don’t want to lose any PCIe slots in their system from a bulky two slot cooling solution. The other thing I noticed when looking at the GeForce 7600 GT is that it has no additional power heard on the printed circuit board (PCB). This means that the card uses less than 75 watts of power that the PCI Express slot provides. Another thumbs up for NVIDIA’s design as a less powerful power supply will be needed to run one or two (in SLI) of these cards in a system. Below is the list of specifications,
5. MSI GeForce NX6600
Here we are with yet another widely bought graphic card in the market; the MSI GeForce NX 6600 based on the nVidia GeForce 6600 chipset. This card is best for running medium level games like DOOM 3, Quake 4, Half Life 2 and so on. However, games like FEAR which have a lot of memory requirements will work a bit slow on such a card. The price tag of this graphic card is $60 which is really low and affordable. This card is a value card and can play most of the games with effective and good frame rate performance. A modest performer, this card includes an outstanding video cable and solid software utilities. Below is the list of specifications,
Now let’s look at what this card has to offer, GeForce 6600 Chipset features:
By Clive Dsouza
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