« Return to: Top 10 Graphics Boards
| Rank | AGP board | Month tested | Street price (4/23/01) | Overall rating | Image quality | Overall speed | Features | Comments |
| 1 | Best Buy ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 905/882-2600 www.ati.com | Feb 01 | $299 | 96 | Very good | Good | Excellent | FEATURES: 4X AGP, ATI Radeon chip, 32MB of DDR SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; DVI-out, TV tuner, hardware DVD support, graphics editing software. SUMMARY: This card retains first place thanks to DirectX 8 support and ATI's video features and bundled software. A great card for the video editing enthusiast. |
| 2 | Best Buy CardExpert GeForce2 MX 800/539-2273 www.gainward.com | Feb 01 | $109 | 93 | Very good | Good | Very good | FEATURES: 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 MX chip, 32MB of SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; S-Video-out, composite-out; DVD, overclocking, and color-calibration software. SUMMARY: This budget MX delivered respectable performance and includes a great software bundle for a lower-priced board. |
| 3 | Hercules 3D Prophet II MX 877/484-5536 www.hercules.com | Mar 01 | $99 | 93 | Excellent | Good | Good | FEATURES: 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 MX chip, 32MB of SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; color-calibration software, five game demos. SUMMARY: Lacks features and software bundles of the top cards, but this reasonably priced board's stellar image quality and performance help it stay in third place. |
| 4 | Asus V7100 Deluxe Combo 510/739-3777 www.asus.com | May 01 | $149 | 92 | Good | Good | Excellent | FEATURES: 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 MX chip, 32MB of SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; 3D glasses, AV adapter, S-Video-in and -out, TV tuner, coaxial output; DVD, image-editing, and color-calibration software, and game. SUMMARY: This board's features rival our top card's, and it costs less. Dim lighting in two test games. |
| 5 | ATI Radeon 64MB DDR 905/882-2600 www.ati.com | Apr 01 | $229 | 91 | Very good | Very good | Very good | FEATURES: 4X AGP, ATI Radeon chip, 64MB of DDR SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; hardware DVD support, S-Video-out, composite-in, composite-out, graphics editing software. SUMMARY: ATI card receives high honors due to partial DirectX 8 support, solid performance at high resolutions, and 64MB of fast DDR SDRAM. |
| 6 | MSI MS-StarForce 818 GeForce2 MX 626/913-0828 www.msicomputer.com | Jun 01 | $99 | 88 | Very good | Good | Good | FEATURES: 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 MX chip, 32MB of SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; S-Video-out; DVD, overclocking, desktop, and color-calibration software. SUMMARY: This inexpensive board's speed and image-quality scores nearly matched those of the other MX-based boards on the chart. |
| 7 | Matrox Millennium G450 800/361-1408 www.matrox.com/mga | Mar 01 | $135 | 86 | Very good | Poor | Excellent | FEATURES: 4X AGP, Matrox G450 chip, 32MB of DDR SDRAM, 360-MHz RAMDAC; dual-display support, DVD software. SUMMARY: While the Matrox didn't exactly excel in 3D performance, it had terrific image quality in our tests. It's the only card on our Top 10 chart to offer dual-display support. |
| 8 | ELSA Gladiac MX 800/272-3572 www.elsa.com | Apr 01 | $139 | 86 | Very good | Good | Satisfactory | FEATURES: 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 MX chip, 32MB of SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; DVD software. SUMMARY: ELSA's Gladiac MX turned in stellar speed scores for an MX board, but image quality lacked polish in two of our games. Buyers can select three popular PC games at discount prices from the Shopelsa.com site. |
| 9 | ELSA Gladiac GeForce2 GTS 800/272-3572 www.elsa.com | Feb 01 | $229 | 86 | Satisfactory | Very good | Very good | FEATURES: 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 GTS chip, 32MB of DDR SGRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; TV-out, no bundled applications. SUMMARY: Image quality pales in comparison with that provided by NVidia GeForce2 Ultra and Pro boards. No bundled games, but you can purchase three from Shopelsa.com for just $20. |
| 10 | Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra 877/484-5536 www.hercules.com | Mar 01 | $499 | 85 | Very good | Excellent | Very good | FEATURES: 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 Ultra chip, 64MB of DDR SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; DVI-out, S-Video-out, composite-out; DVD and color-calibration software, and utilities. SUMMARY: This powerful GeForce2 Ultra-based card delivers the fastest performance on the chart, but it's also the most expensive. |
How We Test: We test graphics boards under Windows Millennium Edition. Our performance scores are based on tests that we evaluate on frame rate (50 percent) and image quality (50 percent). We use GT Interactive's Unreal Tournament, Id Software's Quake III Arena, Interplay's MDK2 Demo, Infogrames' Test Drive 6, and the Caligari TrueSpace 4.2 Benchmark for both performance and image-quality testing. We test graphics boards in a Dell Dimension 4100 Series with a PIII-933 CPU and 128MB of PC133 SDRAM. To test each board, we use drivers supplied by the vendor. Overall rating is based on performance (42.5 percent), features (27.5 percent), price (20 percent), and support policies (10 percent).