Affordable Graphics Cards

We tested a production-level ATI Radeon 9600 XT board and a PNY Verto GeForce FX 5700 Ultra board. Each included 128MB of memory and carried a suggested retail price of $200. For comparison we also tested a Radeon 9600 Pro board from Sapphire and a GeForce FX 5600 Ultra reference board from NVidia.

The 9600 XT and 5700 Ultra boards notched virtually identical scores in our Halo benchmark across our three test resolutions. Both reached 33 frames per second at 1024 by 768 and 22 fps at 1280 by 1024; at 1600 by 1200 they scored 16 and 15 fps, respectively. (For complete results see chart.)

The 9600 XT card outperformed the 5700 Ultra board in our Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness tests, offering frame rates from 30 to 37 percent faster. That said, the 5700 Ultra board showed some substantial gains over the 5600 Ultra board, nearly doubling the older card's scores. (Neither NVidia-based card completed our 4X antialiasing tests at 1600 by 1200 resolution and 32-bit color depth.)

In last month's review of high-end graphics chips ("Big-Ticket Graphics"), we recommended that gamers looking forward to Valve's Half-Life 2 or Id's Doom III wait for benchmarks with those games before buying; the advice remains the same here. However, if you need to get a new board now, the Radeon 9600 XT gets the nod.

Radeon 9600 XT

ATI

Solid performer continues ATI's
graphics winning streak by
outpacing NVidia's latest chip.
Price when reviewed: $200
Current prices (if available)

Verto GeForce FX 5700 Ultra

PNY Technologies

More powerful than the 5600
Ultra, but it still trailed the ATI.
Price when reviewed: $200
Current prices (if available)

Tom Mainelli