Alright, so you?ve just bought your first computer and are eager to join your fellow friends and family in the modern, digital age.  You can?t believe the deal you got on the setup:  a complete system, with tower, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and monitor, and all yours for the low, low price of $499, just like it was advertised on television.  But to cap it off, your new system comes with an Intel Pentium 4 processor for ?all of today?s multimedia and gaming needs.? 

     A few days later, your PC is delivered to your home and with much anticipation, you take it out and set it up.  Now is the moment you?ve been waiting for!  You see, part of your reason for ordering a new pc was because your friend had let you play a few rounds of Unreal Tournament 2003 on his home pc, in all its frag-a-licious glory.  You couldn?t wait to join in the fun on your own system.  Now you rip open your own, brand new copy and fire up the game.  But what?s wrong?  Why is the game so s-l-o-w?  On your friend?s computer, the game looked and played like a dream.  But on your system, the game is incredibly choppy (sometimes almost like a slideshow) and no fun to play at all.  So after a call to tech. support, you learn that your computer came with integrated graphics, and if you want to do some serious gaming you will need to purchase a separate video card. 

     Ok, no problem.  You spend the next day or two scouring computer forums and websites, and finally come to the grim conclusion that you cannot use any of the newer, incredibly fast video cards that most folks can plug into their systems.  Your brand new, P4-based system does not contain the all-important AGP slot.  Not to be discouraged, you remember that someone had mentioned something about PCI ?based video cards for your system, so you begin looking for the best performing card you can get.  But after a long and almost fruitless search, you discover that PCI video cards fill a ?niche? market, and professional review sites tend to ignore them.  All of their efforts are spent reviewing the latest and greatest AGP video cards, since most of their readers own computers with AGP ports.  So, where can you turn for an informed comparison of the multitude of PCI video cards on the market?  That is what this review will attempt to do.

Test setup:

Dell 4500S (that?s right, no AGP slot in here)
P4 2.4 GHz, 400 MHz FSB
768mb PC 2100 DDR memory
Windows XP Home Edition

For the sake of testing, the Catalyst 3.6 drivers were used for the ATI-based cards, while the Nvidia cards were tested with the 45.23 Detonator drivers.  As many of you know, both companies have released newer drivers, but since these were the newest drivers available when I began testing, they were the ones used throughout the project.  For a baseline comparison, all of the tests (that would allow it) were also run on the Intel ?Extreme Graphics? integrated video.  So, without further ado, let?s introduce the cards we?ll be looking at today.

next >

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• Comparison Chart (1 of 8)
• The cards, continued (2 of 8)
• Still more cards. (3 of 8)
• Benchmarks (4 of 8)
• Benchmarks, Cont (5 of 8)
• XXX pics (6 of 8)
• Fooled you. (7 of 8)
• Conclusion (8 of 8)