Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB)

GeForce 8800 GTX brings tremendous processing power to current-generation games. It's also the first card to market that will support all of the 3D gaming-related features of Windows Vista and DirectX 10. The initial release of next-gen games is a bit far off. The poster child, the 3D shooter Crysis, is set to debut in March 2007, and even that game might not put all of the next-gen bells and whistles into play. Still, the GeForce 8800 GTX is so powerful, even compared to ATI's fastest dual card combination, that there's no reason to spend roughly $1,000 on a pair of Radeon cards when you can outperform them with a single $600 GeForce 8800 GTX. That and the fact that Nvidia has finally caught up to ATI's image-quality advantages earn Nvidia's newest card our Editors' Choice award for high-end 3D graphics cards.

Because of design changes in the GeForce 8800 GTX chip's new architecture, we need to consider some of this card's specs differently than we have in the past. The basics are the same. The GeForce 8800 GTX has a core clock speed of 575MHz, and it comes with 768MB of DDR3 RAM clocked to 900MHz with a 1,800MHz data rate. That memory rate is a significant uptick compared to the 800MHz RAM in Nvidia's last flagship card, the GeForce 7950 GX2. But one of the main differences in the GeForce 8800 GTX's architecture lies in how we consider its pipelines.

With no DirectX 10 games available to test on at the moment, we can't speak to the GeForce 8800 GTX's next-generation performance, aside from the fact that it's the only card on the market that claims DirectX 10 compatibility. ATI's next-gen card, code-named R600, was rumored to be released in January 2007, but we haven't heard much about it so far. We imagine that ATI (whose acquisition by AMD has been finalized) will have a DirectX 10 card sooner or later, but right now Nvidia is the only vendor with something to show. And while we can't really say who will win the battle for next-generation performance, the GeForce 8800 GTX dominates every single other card on the market right now.

One of the most important things to note about the GeForce 8800 GTX and its performance is that you would be smart to pair this card with a capable monitor that can go to resolutions of 1,600x1,200 or above. Nvidia calls this XHD (extreme high definition) gaming. Whatever you want to call it, if you're not playing at high resolutions with antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, and other image-quality tweaks cranked, you'll likely hit a CPU bottleneck, which means that you're not giving the card enough to do. But when you get up to those high-quality settings, the results are amazing.


The good:
Dominating performance in current-generation games; catches up to ATI on current-gen image quality; first card out with support for DirectX10 and next-gen gaming features; amazing value proposition.

The bad:
Will likely require you to beef up your power supply in SLI mode.

ATI Radeon HD 3450 Graphics Card

AMD's entry-level ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics card is an amazing deal for those looking to juice up their PC's video-playback performance and quality. For just $49, you get support for HD video playback, high desktop resolutions, power enough to display all the bells and whistles of Windows Vista's Aero interface, and the ability to add additional cards to support more monitors. But while it supports the latest DirectX 10.1 (DX10.1) 3D features, the Radeon HD 3450 is decidedly not the card for you if you play games.

Our sample card was a half-height, fanless PCI Express model with 256MB of DDR2 memory, intended for low-profile home theater cases. The card has only a single DVI port, as well as a component-video/S-Video connector and a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) adapter for the DVI port. ATI also has a model available with both DVI and VGA ports, as well as one with a VGA port and the new DisplayPort connector.

Though this is an inexpensive, entry-level card, the HD 3450 has the power to handle all of Vista's graphics effects, including desktop transparency, Flip 3D task switching, and the full suite of slide-show effects. That makes it a good replacement for entry-level PC graphics, such as the integrated graphics chips found on many motherboards, which are fast enough to enable basic effects such as transparency but disable more-sophisticated effects such as slide-show transitions.

While its desktop performance was excellent, the HD 3450's gaming performance was dismal. It delivered slide-show-like frame rates of 11 frames per second (fps) in F.E.A.R. and 4.6fps in Company of Heroes (both at a resolution of 1,280x1,024). If you have a nostalgic bent, the card has enough power to handle 3D games from early in the decade at low resolutions, but its support of the DX10.1 standard used by the newest games is mostly there as a checkbox item for the promotional text on the card's box. Casual gamers should consider the Radeon HD 3650 as the bare minimum, with the HD 3850 a more suitable entry-level card for serious gamers.

For the card's home-theater-PC target audience, though, the HD 3450 delivers. Its lack of a fan offers silent operation, and its video-playback performance and visual quality are top-notch. Despite its low price, the card offered flawless playback of 1080p HD content on a 1,900x1,200 24-inch monitor. It supports ATI Avivo HD video, with hardware decoding of MPEG and DivX, as well as the H.264 and VC-1 video codecs used on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. This makes for a sharp, clear picture with smooth frame rates, even at high resolutions, without requiring a PC with a high-end CPU to decode the video. The HD 3000 series cards improve on the hardware decoder introduced in the HD 2000 series by reducing CPU utilization and increasing memory bandwidth to smooth playback at the highest resolutions. With the HDMI adapter and High-Bandwith Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support, the HD 3450 will handle even copyright-protected HD video.

If you're looking for better 3D-gaming performance, plan on spending more than the Radeon HD 3450's bargain price. But if you just want a graphics card that delivers good performance on the Windows desktop and excellent video-playback performance and quality, this card is hard to beat.

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Direct Price: $49