Spotlight: Graphics Boards

Yes, actually, you can have it all. In this Spotlight illuminating today's latest and hottest graphics boards, ATI's All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro stands out, delivering awesome graphics and speed when you want your entertainment fast and furious, and television on your PC when you need to relax. Somewhat less adaptable, but no less adept in performance, our group of five power graphics boards produced impressive speed and image quality when running our Test Center's suite of games. ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro led that pack in overall speed. With faster processors, more memory, and support for Microsoft's DirectX 9, all of these boards are well-equipped to run the next generation of PC games.

Thanks to innovative new 3D technologies that can handle such graphically demanding visuals in new PC games as crackling fire, rustling blades of grass, the glimmer of stained glass, and real-time shadows and lighting effects, cinematic realism is no longer a distant promise. Of course, the detailed textures and dramatic lighting effects in new games require some heavy lifting from your graphics card. Though new games will run on older hardware, the more memory and processing power your system and your graphics card have, the smoother the game will play and the better the visuals will look.

The Fast and the Faster

In the two-horse chip-set competition between ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro and NVidia's GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, gaming performance is a sure winner. Running Epic Game's Unreal Tournament 2003 and Croteam's Serious Sam 2, boards equipped with these processors produced frame rates well above 100 frames per second, even at a demanding resolution of 1600 by 1200. (The magic number is 60 fps; when frame rates drop below that, you may notice jumps and pauses.)

Only antialiasing (AA) seemed to separate ATI-based boards from NVidia-powered models. At lower screen resolutions--1024 by 768 or less--turning on antialiasing will smooth rough, pixelated edges commonly seen on diagonal or curved surfaces. (These edges look smoother at higher resolutions, so you probably won't need to use antialiasing.) Another feature, anisotropic filtering, alleviates the distortion that occurs when a textured image (such as a tiled floor in a long hallway) extends from the foreground into the background. But the price you pay for a better-looking game is lower frame rates. In our Unreal Tournament 2003 tests, last year's top boards all dropped below 60 fps with AA turned on. Not so with this year's models: With AA switched on, the Radeon 9800 Pro-based cards yielded frame rates at or above 130 fps, and most of the boards with NVidia's FX 5900 chips hovered at around 75 fps. (Those carrying less-expensive NVidia FX 5200 and FX 5600 chips fell below 50 fps.)

With antialiasing on, the ATI-based boards were faster than their competitors and displayed a better-looking game, virtually eliminating jaggies and rough textures. NVidia-based cards showed relatively minor improvements. Of course, both ATI and NVidia are already looking to the next generation. New graphics boards from ATI with faster processors and memory speeds will begin shipping in early October, while cards equipped with NVidia's latest chips should be on store shelves by the end of October.

Graphics cards supporting DirectX 9 have existed for more than a year now. But games that take advantage of the standard's new graphics tricks are just arriving. Valve Software's Half Life 2 wasn't available at the time of this writing, but it should be in stores by the time you read this. If you live for Doom, however, you'll just have to be patient: Id Software's long-awaited upgrade, Doom III: The Legacy (based on OpenGL, not DirectX 9), won't be ready until early next year.

Game developers' erratic release schedules make upgrading our graphics boards test suite difficult. For this review, we relied on the same suite of games we put together a year ago. See the How We Test information below our chart.

Couch Computing

The recent trend toward using PCs as home theaters leans very heavily on the graphics card. For several years, ATI's All-In-Wonder boards have offered multimedia functions. Last year saw the launch of Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition, and this year NVidia board manufacturers are selling updated Personal Cinema packages. (Click here for more information.)

For our head-to-head comparison, we reviewed ATI's $449 All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro and EVGA's $200 Personal Cinema E-GeForce FX 5200. Both require you to connect an extensive set of components (infrared remote, VGA or DVI, cable, audio, and breakout boxes), plus install a plethora of drivers.

Much like Windows XP Media Center, the EVGA Personal Cinema's large blue menu provides options for watching or creating a DVD, viewing photos, editing a movie, playing music, or watching TV. The viewing quality of TV on an LCD was okay, but when we used the EVGA to display Windows on a TV (via an S-Video cable), the desktop was difficult to read. If you have a TV or an LCD with a DVI port, ATI's card may be a better choice: In our tests, its digital interface created a clearer picture.

Though pricey, ATI's All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro affords a bonanza of features for home theater aficionados. (It also blew EVGA's card off the track in our gaming tests.) And the All-In-Wonder 9800's cousin, the 9600, is the only board we've seen to date that includes an FM tuner and has the ability to record and play back radio.

While its remote control is functionally similar to the EVGA's, ATI's software is better in some respects. For example, if you press the DVD button on the remote while viewing TV, a dialog box pops up and asks you whether you want to quit your current task. ATI's TV-On-Demand has TiVo-like functionality, which lets you record and pause live TV. A helpful status bar at the bottom of the screen tracks your progress as you advance or rewind.

ATI's Multimedia Center software provides a library where you can see listings of recorded TV shows, movies, music, and pictures. But unlike EVGA's large centralized interface, ATI's Library--as well as the individual DVD and television apps--must be launched from a panel on the desktop. (ATI says you can manually set the Library to launch at boot.)

We like the concept of a multimedia PC and found the functionality to be a nice add-on. Nevertheless, we're not ready to replace our existing home theater setups with these products just yet.

-- Alexandra Krasne