Best PC Upgrades

Graphics Card

Photograph: Marc Simon

A new graphics board is especially worthwhile if you're looking for a performance boost in 3D apps and games. Windows Vista will use the 3D hardware in modern graphics cards to accelerate many of its fancy desktop features, including Flip3D and other cool Aero Glass transition effects. But if you aren't running Vista, the biggest reason to upgrade your graphics board is to enhance your gaming experience.

If you want to run eye-popping games like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on an aging PC or to improve their performance on a more recent box, there is no more effective upgrade you can make. If you've been using low-end integrated graphics, even a $100 midrange card can boost your graphics performance tremendously.

Today's hottest competing technologies are CrossFire from ATI and SLI from nVidia. Both let pairs of graphics boards work together to produce extraordinary graphics processing power. To use either one, you'll need a motherboard that has two PCI Express slots and that supports either SLI or CrossFire. Compatible graphics cards are by no means cheap, and using two of them can seriously spike your power usage (see "How to Install a New Power Supply"). But the performance these setups dish out makes enthusiasts drool.

At the extreme cutting edge is Quad-SLI, which uses two nVidia-based graphics cards, each of which has two graphics processors (GPUs). For $1200 or so (the price of two GeForce 7950 GX2-based boards), you can luxuriate in superb performance and display quality with even the latest games. That $1200 doesn't include the cost of the motherboard, of course. And if you're going with a setup like this, you'll need a heavy-duty power supply (typically over 500 watts) that's rated to handle the load. Slightly less radical gamers can buy one 7950 GX2-based board, which shines at higher resolutions, and use it with a standard PCIe system. See our test report summary, "eVGA e-GeForce 7950 GX2," for our latest assessment of this hot-rod card.

Testing the Upgrades

A new graphics board can pay huge dividends in 3D performance, even if you don't go high-end. Our tests confirm that an old AGP card or even newer on-board graphics won't cut it with current games. Integrated graphics save cash on a PC purchase; but if you try to run a demanding game, you'll quickly realize what your money didn't buy. And improved performance is only half the story anyway. Older cards can't handle the most realistic graphics effects, or even run some of the most graphics-hungry games, like Oblivion.

On our brand-new Polywell 945GX computer with a 3-GHz Intel P4 processor, 1GB of memory, and Intel 950G integrated graphics using main memory, even somewhat older games like Doom3 crawled along at 9 frames per second at 1024 by 768 resolution. A $170 eVGA e-GeForce 7600 GT KO PCIe card, though, generated a respectable 68 fps in Doom3 at 1024 by 768 resolution, and 64 fps at 1600 by 1200. Fear, a newer and more demanding game, showed a huge boost, too (see the accompanying chart). A PNY GeForce 7900 GTX delivered great performance, particularly at higher resolutions, but you'll pay a hefty $480 premium for the added power.

Though PCIe has become the standard for graphics cards, there's still hope for your older AGP system. Both ATI and nVidia are continuing to make new AGP cards, even if they're usually PCIe cards with AGP translators. On our test computer, we ran through two upgrade scenarios, starting with an older, once-popular 128MB Xtasy ATI 9600 board: a midrange 256MB Sapphire ATI Radeon x1600 Pro card ($100), and a high-end 256MB eVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS KO ($380 list).

With the Sapphire ATI Radeon x1600 Pro, performance nearly tripled in Doom3 at 1024 by 768 resolution, from an unpleasant 15 fps to a palatable 44 fps. Fear showed a similar improvement at the same resolution, from 11 fps to 34 fps.

The 256MB eVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS KO packs a bigger punch--for your PC and your wallet. The almost five times faster performance for Fear at 1024 by 786 resolution would make any gamer smile. But unless you're really attached to your AGP system, you're probably better off putting the money toward a new PCIe-equipped computer.