High-Flying Graphics Cards

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Test Report: Top 10 Graphics Boards (chart)

For the past couple of years, NVidia has dominated mainstream graphics chips. The majority of boards and systems in our Top 10 Graphics Boards, Top 15 Office PCs, and Top 15 Home PCs charts have some flavor of GeForce chip set. But that's likely to change as a slew of new boards hit shelves over the next few months. Here's the current lineup.

Hoping to recapture its old standing in the performance graphics arena, ATI recently launched the Radeon 9000, 9000 Pro, and 9700 chips. Their specs look impressive (at press time, we had received only the 9000 Pro). Geared toward gamers on a budget, the Radeon 9000 should compete head to head with NVidia's GeForce4 MX 440. Currently, boards that are equipped with the MX 440 chip typically sell in the $100 range. Targeted at mainstream gamers, the slightly faster Radeon 9000 Pro graphics board (which performed well on our tests) sells for $129--still a relative bargain. All of the new ATI chips incorporate a technology called Fullstream, which is designed to smooth the blocky textures and rough edges that often show up in streaming Internet video. And unlike NVidia's GeForce4 Ti chips, the Radeons support DirectX 8.1, an updated version of Microsoft's application programming interface that allows the chip to render more textures in a single pass. (NVidia's current Ti chips support DirectX 8, but not 8.1.)

Hard-core gamers at this year's E3 convention were treated to a sneak preview of Id's Doom III, a DirectX 9 version of the cult favorite, running on ATI's Radeon 9700. It didn't disappoint them. ATI claims its new chip will be faster than NVidia's top-speed chip, the GeForce4 Ti 4600. The Radeon 9700 will provide support for 8X AGP, as well as full hardware support for games based on DirectX 8.1 and the upcoming DirectX 9 as they appear. DirectX 9 takes advantage of new hardware features that game programmers can use to create more complex and realistic lighting effects and textures.

For buyers watching their budget, graphics boards based on Trident's new line of chips should arrive in stores around the time this issue hits newsstands. According to Trident, the cards will be the least-expensive models on the market to offer hardware support for DirectX 8.1 and partial support for DirectX 9. Cards based on Trident's XP4 T1 chip will sell for a retail price of around $69, and promise performance similar to that of more-expensive cards based on NVidia's GeForce4 Ti 4200 chip. Video cards running on the Trident XP4 T2 should provide performance comparable to that of boards with NVidia's second-most-powerful chip, the GeForce4 Ti 4400; at $79, however, they will be priced about $30 to $40 less than the GeForce4-based boards. Trident's new line tops out with the $99 XP4 T3, which the company says will fall somewhere between the performance of NVidia's GeForce4 Ti 4400 and ATI's Radeon 9700.

Meanwhile, Silicon Integrated Systems is making its first serious foray into the 3D-graphics-chip realm with the midrange Xabre 400 chip. SIS says that the Xabre 400 will support DirectX 8.1 and 8X AGP. Like NVidia, SIS makes the chips and licenses them to partner companies that manufacture and sell the graphics boards. A reference version of the Xabre 400 that we tested was a bit slower than we had expected. Its speed scores matched those of budget-level graphics boards based on the GeForce4 MX 440. Boards based on the Xabre 400 chip will retail for about $150 and should be available in stores by the time you read this.

NVidia isn't sitting on its laurels, either. Its next-generation chip (code-named NV30), launching this fall, will support DirectX 8.1 and 9, as well as 8X AGP. At press time, NVidia wasn't publicly releasing details on price, clock speeds, ship dates, or card configuration.