Crazy GFX at a sensible price

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AMD Radeon HD3850 Sapphire - £130
We couldn't get hold of the top end HD3870 before going to press, but this is its almost identical sibling: exactly the same architecture, including AMD's HD video processing engine - just slightly lower clock speeds.
The 3800 series is a genuine comeback for AMD. By shrinking the process size for production and tweaking the chip a little, they've managed to dispense with the dual slot cooler and the enormous power requirement to produce a sleek card that you'll barely know is there.

With the launch of their newest motherboards, the FX790s, AMD are going to make it possible to rig four of their 3800 series cards together in Crossfire X. An intriguing thought for those of us who thought two graphics cards were more than enough, but a clear indication that GPUs are going the way of CPUs: more physical processors, rather than more complicated ones.

When it comes to games, the HD3850 is quite a way off the performance of the overclocked 8800GT opposite, but it is much cheaper. The HD3850 and the stock 8800GT are much closer in terms of price and performance.

Does it have enough grunt to be a worthwhile buy, or will you be upgrading again in six months? Certainly for £130 it does - just look at how deftly it handles Crysis. Performance falls off quite rapidly once anti-aliasing is applied, however.

The good news is that on a 20 or 22-inch LCD you'll be gaming in native resolution without spending a fortune - albeit at slightly lower detail levels.

Brilliant for the price, but definitely struggles at high def settings.

Score: 90%

GeForce 8800GT Alpha Dog BFG - £180
As with most graphics cards these days, the stock 8800GT has been seized upon by manufacturers and quickly bettered. While overclocking usually voids your warranty, folks like BFG are happy to boost the stock speeds and create a beast like this.

Unlike the reference boards, which run at a core clock speed of 600MHz, this particular model has been sent out of the factory at a whopping 670MHz. More importantly, the stream processors run at 200MHz faster than the reference design. In short, it flies.

It eats all cards up to and almost including the 8800GTX for breakfast, and yet remains svelte in a single slot cooler with just one molex power connector required. It's also very, very quiet.

Although it has fewer stream processors than the all-conquering GeForce 8800GTX, higher clock speeds and extra texturing units make up for any shortcomings. Just look at the benchmarks: Crysis is playable at 1600x1200. There are only a handful of single cards that can claim the same, and at under £200 a pop an SLI version of this card isn't beyond the realms of imagination either.

Of course, you could probably get close to these speeds yourself with a standard 8800GT and a bit of tweaking. The trouble is, it's almost impossible to find a cheap unclocked 8800GT right now. A shame, as the whole point of the original was that it was on sale for a generous £150.

Two months ago, we'd have paid twice as much money for a card with similar performance.

Incredible power, but you may be able to equal it yourself.

Score: 89%

GeForce 8800GTS 640Mb PNY - £266
There's been no big price drop for nVidia's previous Number Two card. Which is surprising, since despite more memory and a larger memory bus (320bit for the GTS, 256bit for the GT) it's been completely superseded by the cheaper, faster GT. It's hotter and noisier too - suddenly yesterday's darling is starting to look a bit out of shape. Score: 78%

Radeon HD2600XT Sapphire - £66
You'll see these kicking around at a very attractive price and, to be fair, they're capable of playing games so long as you're careful with the resolution. It's not such an issue on an old CRT monitor, but LCD panels usually need to be run at their native resolution. If you really are this strapped for cash, you'd still be better off saving a few more pennies and going for the 8600GT. Score: 64%

GeForce 8800GTS 320Mb Foxconn - £172
This was once our favourite graphics card in the world. Stellar performance and a reasonable price. It's being phased out, however, as it just can't compete with the newer, sleeker 8800GT. We commemorate this departing hero - but we don't recommend you buy it any more. Even though you'll find prices falling lower than the one given here. Score: 74%

EN8600GT TOP Asus - £91
Systems often gets asked: "What's the best graphics card for under a hundred pounds?" It's a reasonable question, because a hundred pounds is still a lot of money. This is nVidia's current sub-£100 chip, the 8600GT, given a slight tweak at the Asus factory and shipped in an overclocked state. It's still hard to recommend, unless you're happy playing at 1024x768. Score: 76%

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