Graphic Card Reviews

Graphic card reviews help make your choice between available cards (e.g. ati graphic cards (ati radeon graphics) and nvidia geforce) easier. Know what you want; then pick the best video card and/or the best graphics card for your system.

Welcome to my graphic card reviews. If you are a computer gamer, or work with high end graphics, you have come to the right place for quick, down and dirty reviews. If you are neither of those, most of these cards would be a waste of money for you.

If your computer is more of an office computer then you most likely will not need a graphics card, the built in graphics on the motherboard will suffice. I'll cover 3 categories for each manufacturer reviewed here: low, med, and high end. So let's jump right in to the graphic card reviews...

• Low End Around $100 - This goes to the GeForce 8600 GTS. This card can be had for under $100.00 if you search a bit for it. The 8600GTS is a PCI-E card, that sports 256MB GDDR3 memory and is HDCP and SLI ready. The core is clocked at 675MHz with the memory at 2000MHz. It won't run the latest games at full graphics, but for games like WoW or BF1942 it'll do just fine.
  
  You can pick up the EVGA GeForce 8600GTS 256-P2-N761-AR video card here.
• Mid Range Around $200 - The GeForce 8800GT is a great card for this price. With 512MB memory clocked at 1800MHz and a core clock of 600MHz, this card will keep you in gaming for quite some time. You won't be playing Crysis at extreme settings, but at med to high settings you'll have nice smooth framerates..
  
  You can get the EVGA GeForce 8800GT 512-P3-N801-AR Video Card here for around $170.00.
• High End - If you want to play games at the highest settings with AA and AF maxed out at high resolutions, then take a look at running 2 8800GT's in SLI. This setup will only cost you about half of what the 9800GX2's are running and will out-perform it most of the time.
  
  Pick up a couple EVGA GeForce 8800GT 512-P3-N801-AR video cards here.

Side Note: I recommend EVGA a lot here. They have a great trade up program that makes buying from them a great choice. Within three months of purchasing one of their cards, you can trade up to a higher priced card, and get full credit on the purchase price of your current card. A deal like that is just to hard to pass up.

• Low End Around $75 - If you only game occasionally and don't want to put in the big bucks for a high end card, or your games are not that demanding graphically, check out the Radeon HD2600. At around $70.00 or so it will get you up and running for a nice low price. This card will not run today's first person shooters at high graphics settings but will do a great job for the occasional gamer.
  
  You can grab the HIS Radeon HD 2600 Pro video card here.
• Mid Range Around $150 - A single Radeon 3870 with 512MB GDDR4 will get your games up and running quite nicely. This card is set up with DirectX 10.1 so is already future proofed. The core runs at 775MHz, but you can look for an overclocked version from a company like Asus that'll take that up to over 850MHz. This card is HDMI, HDTV, and Crossfire ready. This card works very well in Crossfire mode, so in the future if you wanted to add a second card, as long as your motherboard supports it, all you have to do is drop one in.
  
  You can get the Diamond Radeon HD 3870 video card here.
• High End - Looking for a top end solution to run games at the highest resolutions and graphics settings? At around $350.00 or so this setup will do that. Dual Radeon 3870's in Crossfire configuration will get your games running smooth and fast. With DirectX 10.1 already in place they are set for the future. The 3870's core is clocked at 775MHz with 512MB memory per card at 2225MHz.
  
  You can pick up the ASUS Radeon HD 3870 EAH3870 video card here in it's overclocked version at a great price.

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