Photograph: Marc SimonFor the first time in years, 3D games have jumped ahead of the hardware that runs them--specifically, high-end graphics boards. You no longer have to worry that you'll spend $300 to $500 on the latest graphics board only to wait months before a game can challenge it. Games such as Doom 3 and Far Cry are here now. And they are challenging, to both you and your graphics board.
Here's another complication: Boards with the PCI Express interface have become available, with twice the bandwidth of the 8X AGP interface. This raises some questions: Is PCI Express required for top performance? Is it time to upgrade your computer along with your graphics?
Our Test Center put 17 boards--9 AGP and 8 PCI Express--through the rigors of cutting-edge game graphics. In addition to performance boards, we looked at 3 value-price boards with midrange chip sets from NVidia and ATI.
As we started this story, numerous questions came to mind: How many power leads will all these boards need to work in your system? Are the boards slot hogs? Can they tame the incredible computational demands of Doom 3? Plus, the question on every gamer's mind: Which graphics board outperforms the rest?
Gamers aren't the only group looking for answers. Multimedia fans want to know what video ports these boards offer. In addition, which companies provide the best hardware and software bundles?
The answers to these questions surprised us and offered insight into what's important when you're looking to upgrade.
Ad Choices