Greater Graphics
You don't have to be a gamer to benefit from a better graphics card. Our lab tests identify the best choices, from $99 boards to sophisticated dual-card setups.Richard Baguley is a San Francisco Bay Area-based freelance writer. Tom Mainelli is a senior editor for PC World.
Photograph by Marc Simon
Best of all, you don't have to spend a fortune to see noticeable improvements in your PC's graphics capabilities. For this roundup, the PC World Test Center benchmarked 16 cards using a new suite of tests. Our mainstream-board chart topper, EVGA's e-GeForce 6800 GS, will offer most PCs a nice performance boost for $200. If you are willing to spend more--make that a lot more--our top-ranked power card, EVGA's $570 e-GeForce 7800 GTX KO, offers cutting-edge graphics power.
Still looking for a reason to update your PC's graphics? Consider Windows Vista. Microsoft hasn't actually set the requirements for its next version of Windows yet, but the company's initial recommendations are to have a dedicated graphics board supporting DirectX 9 and having 128MB of memory in order to run the new stylish and effects-heavy user interface called Aero Glass.
In this article:
Better Graphics, Better Experience
While you don't need a $500 graphics board to run Microsoft Word smoothly, an old card or integrated graphics can affect overall system performance and even your productivity. For instance, integrated graphics draw on main system memory to do the job, which leaves your PC with fewer overall resources.
Our Dell Dimension 5150 test machine used Intel's latest integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950, part of the Intel 945G Express chip set, yet we still saw modest performance gains by upgrading to basic, $100 cards. XFX's value GeForce 6600 with 256MB of DDR2 RAM upped performance by about 7 percent in the Mozilla Web-browser component of our WorldBench 5 tests. The difference in our gaming tests was even more notable. See "$100 Cards Bump Up Performance, on a Budget" for the lowdown.
Another way that a good graphics card can improve your productivity is through dual-monitor support. Few integrated graphics chips or entry-level cards can take advantage of Windows XP's ability to spread a desktop over two monitors, which is too bad: A 2004 study by the University of Utah entitled "Productivity and Multi-Screen Computer Displays" found that people complete common business tasks in spreadsheets and word processing programs more quickly and accurately when they use dual monitors.
Whether you're connecting to one or two monitors, another limiting factor of your old graphics setup may be the connections it has: Most systems with integrated graphics don't offer DVI connections, which allow you to use the digital interface of most LCD monitors to get the best possible image quality.
It's also worth noting that high-end video editing apps such as Pinnacle Studio and Adobe Premier Pro can leverage a dedicated graphics card's GPU and memory to improve render times on some effects. If you're interested in editing high-definition video, Pinnacle Studio 10 requires at least 256MB of video memory.
A new card can also make DVDs and videos look better through built-in technologies--Avivo in ATI's newest chips, and PureVideo in nVidia's. Among other things, these technologies handle images much the way high-end DVD players do, processing images to deinterlace them (removing jittery effects you sometimes see in fast-moving video) and to scale them to fit the screen or window better.
Playing Your Cards Right
Before you peruse our chart for your perfect graphics card upgrade, you should first understand some of the technologies underlying the cards and inside your PC.
All of the graphics cards we examined plug into a PCI Express (PCIe) x16 slot, which comes standard on the motherboards of most new PCs. A PCIe slot can transfer data faster than the AGP slot that is found in older PCs, and you can't use a PCIe graphics card in an AGP slot (or vice versa).
To find out which slot you have, check your PC's manuals or read our guide to the modern motherboard. Note that an older system with integrated graphics has to have at least an available AGP slot to make it worth upgrading. A newer PC with a PCIe x16 slot would be even better. Some motherboards have two PCIe x16 slots, into which you can install two cards in parallel for some serious graphics muscle (see "Two Cards or One, That Is the Question").
Most manufacturers offer both PCIe and AGP versions of their low-end and midrange products, but you won't always find the latest chips. For instance, EVGA's fastest AGP card is the GeForce 6800, based on nVidia technology that's over a year old. ATI's fastest AGP card is its similarly aging X850 series.
At the heart of a graphics card is the graphics processing unit, a dedicated chip for rendering 3D graphics quickly and efficiently. While your CPU processes any sort of information, a GPU handles just display data, turning amazingly complex mathematical models into full-motion images. ATI and nVidia make the vast majority of chips appearing on graphics cards from the lower end (ATI's Radeon X1300 and nVidia's GeForce 6200) up to the higher end (ATI's Radeon X1800 XT and nVidia's GeForce 7800 GTX).
The difference between the two classes of graphics board lies in their capability to effectively handle the most complex 3D display work, particularly at very high resolutions. Boards that are built around more recent GPUs support new features of Microsoft's DirectX 9 software, such as Shader Model 3.0, which some games use to create more realistic images.
Like a PC, a graphics card relies on memory to do its job. Each card we tested features at least 128MB of graphics memory, and most offer 256MB; at the high end is a 512MB card. Generally speaking, 128MB is fine for running office applications and many games (even when you're using two monitors); but if you can afford it, a 256MB card's extra memory should help advanced and future apps run at their higher quality settings.
Two things to consider when comparing two seemingly identical cards are the software bundles and warranties. At press time nVidia was offering a free copy of the game Call of Duty 2 if you bought a high-end card from partners including BFG Tech, EVGA, and XFX. Sapphire also had an interesting bundle: Its ATI X1800 XL-based card had demos of four games running an hour that let you download full versions of two of the games.
ATI recently reduced the warranty on its own cards from three years to one but says manufacturers are free to extend that as they choose. The warranty on cards based on nVidia GPUs differ: AOpen offers 15 months, while others (such as BFG Tech, EVGA, and XFX) supply a lifetime warranty under which they claim they will repair or replace the card for as long as you own it. XFX even allows you to transfer the warranty if you sell the card. EVGA also offers an upgrade plan: If you buy one of its cards but decide within 90 days that you would rather have a faster one, you can trade in your old card for a credit.
Finally, be sure you know what devices you plan to connect to your board. Whether you intend to use a single analog monitor, a digital connection to dual LCDs, or even a component hookup to a TV, it's up to you to make sure your card supports it.
In the Charts
EVGA's top-ranked e-GeForce 6800 GS (left) and ATI's All-In-Wonder X800 XL.
See the chart: Top Graphics Cards For this round of tests, the PC World Test Center created a new suite of benchmarks featuring the latest games. Why games? Because that's where the most sophisticated and demanding programming always happens. So even if you're not planning to use a new graphics card specifically for games, they're still the best way to test a card's chops. As such, we tested each card with a variety of games--including Battlefield 2, Doom3, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, and Quake 4--at multiple resolutions and quality settings.
ATI's X1800 XT (left) was speedy but noisy, placing it behind two overclocked cards--EVGA's 7800 GTX KO and BFG Technologies' 7800 GTX OC.
We divided the tested graphics cards into two categories: mainstream (cards priced from $150 to $299) and power (cards priced $300 and up). We tried to include a mix of both nVidia- and ATI-based cards, but despite ATI's recent launch of its new 1000-series chips, few vendors (including ATI itself) were able to provide us with testable cards. As a result, we tested ten nVidia-based and six ATI-based boards for this month's chart.
Our top pick for mainstream users is the EVGA e-GeForce 6800 GS: It performed well in our tests, producing decent frame rates at most resolutions, and at $200 it's great value for the money. ATI's $299 All-In-Wonder X800 XL lands in second; it combines high-quality graphics with a TV tuner, allowing you to record TV shows and watch them on the PC. (ATI recently launched a $499 X1800 XL-based version of the All-In-Wonder, but it wasn't available for testing.)
BFG Technologies' GeForce 6600 GT OC performed reasonably well in our tests, but its 128MB of memory should be the minimum you're considering. PNY's GeForce 6600 GT has the same limitation; at $165, though, it's the cheapest on the chart. Several ATI-based cards just missed the rankings, including PowerColor's $170 Radeon X800 GT and Sapphire's $380 Radeon X1800 XL. Coming in closest was the ASUS Radeon EAX1800 XL, a $400 power card.
EVGA earns the top spot again on the power side: Its e-GeForce 7800 GTX KO was seriously fast, yet noise remained at a minimum thanks to the large, cage-like heat sink that covers the entire card without blocking the adjacent PCI expansion slot. By contrast, the ATI Radeon X1800 XT not only blocked the next slot but was also much noisier. While at $570 the EVGA card isn't cheap, it has performance to spare, generating good frame rates at the highest resolutions. It even produced a very playable 53.8 frames per second at 1600 by 1200 resolution in Quake 4 with antialiasing enabled, a test that made many of the other cards sputter. It had some serious competition, though, as both the BFG Technologies GeForce 7800 GTX OC and the ATI Radeon X1800 XT were as fast (or slightly faster).
Taking the third and fifth spots in the power category, respectively, are the XFX GeForce 7800 GT and MSI GeForce 7800 GT. Both use a slightly slower version of the nVidia GPU, and it shows: They produced significantly lower scores in our tests. Both, however, are also a lot cheaper than their faster cousins, and the XFX comes with one of the better software bundles in the group, including the games Far Cry and MotoGP2.
Integrated graphics have always been adequate for most business computing tasks, but they have also been incapable of handling sophisticated 3D graphics rendering, including any kind of serious gaming. Though integrated graphics have improved recently, new software is ever more demanding, and the next-generation Windows Vista is expected to come with heavy graphics-processing requirements. With that in mind, even a careful and modest investment in a new graphics card could give your PC new legs.See the chart: Top Graphics Cards
Two Cards or One, That Is the Question
SLI lets your PC use two graphics cards at once.
PCs featuring dual-card graphics capabilities like nVidia's established SLI (Scalable Link Interface) and ATI's still-evolving CrossFire let users run two graphics cards simultaneously, based on the assumption that two are always better than one. However, our tests reveal that this isn't always the case, particularly at the pricey end of the graphics card spectrum.
We tested both a mainstream and a high-end SLI graphics card combination using Alienware's Aurora 7500 SLI system. At press time ATI CrossFire-based systems were still unavailable. For the mainstream assessment, we tested cards with nVidia's GeForce 6600 GT that sell for about $165 each; for the power graphics comparison, we used GeForce 7800 GTX cards priced at about $550 each.
At the high end, tests at a resolution of 1024 by 768 actually favored the single-card 7800 GTX over the dual-card setup in some instances. For example, in our Battlefield 2 test with antialiasing turned on, the single-card version hit 78 fps and the dual-card one reached 76 fps. However, when we turned up the resolution to 1600 by 1200, the dual-card option took over, posting 69 fps versus 58 fps with antialiasing turned on. Half-Life 2 results were similar.
In our other tests, such as Quake 4, the dual-card setup generally outperformed the single card at the lower resolutions, but often by an imperceptible few frames per second. When we turned up the resolution, the dual-card option widened the lead.
Mainstream Cards Show SLI Advantage
The single-versus-dual showdown using the mainstream 6600 GT boards produced a clearer winner: Without exception the dual-card configuration bettered the single-card option at both resolutions. However, during testing we received a $200 card based on nVidia's new GeForce 6800 GS chip, so we threw it in the mix and found that for just $35 more than the price of a single 6600 GT (and $130 less than the cost of two), the 6800 GS proved a worthy challenger to the dual-card 6600 GT configuration.
In Battlefield 2 at 1024 by 768 (with antialiasing turned on), the single 6600 GT card posted 40 frames per second, the dual card-6600 GT setup reached 59 fps, and the single 6800 GS card notched 60 fps. In the Quake 4 test the dual-card 6600 GT setup won out at the same resolution, reaching 111 fps compared to 67 fps for the single 6600 GT card and 84 fps for the single 6800 GS card.
So when are two cards really better than one? At the high end it makes sense to pay for two 7800 GTX cards only if you need the very best level of performance and you plan to run your monitor at 1600 by 1200 (or higher). If you're in the mainstream camp, the recommendations are trickier. If you already own a 6600 GT, buying a second one makes sense. If you're starting from scratch, a single 6800 GS is the smarter buy.
SLI Shines in High Resolution
nVidia's dual-card SLI setup is best at high resolutions and offers the most value using mainstream boards.
$100 Cards Bump Up Performance, on a Budget
Value cards improved on the performance of our Dell PC's integrated graphics.
We wanted to get an idea of what benefits a $100 graphics card could give to an upgradable system with integrated graphics. So we tested a couple of these low-cost cards using a $1394 Dell Dimension 5150 system with a 3.2-GHz processor and 512MB of RAM.
After running a series of tests using the Graphics Media Accelerator 950 chip that was integrated in the PC's Intel 945G chip set, we upgraded the system with two PCI Express graphics cards: first the $99 XFX GeForce 6600 and then the $102 Sapphire Radeon X1300. The GMA 950 is the fastest integrated graphics chip Intel currently offers, and the two boards we tried are among the least expensive mainstream cards available. Although the two boards include recent GPUs, they use 256MB of DDR2 (not DDR3) memory to keep the price down. Both support dual monitors.
Head to Head
Although we again used games to put the Sapphire, XFX, and integrated graphics options through their paces, we also applied WorldBench 5, which employs a range of programs in testing. This way, we could get a reasonable idea of the performance increase to be derived in everyday tasks.
Adding XFX's card boosted the Dell test system's WorldBench 5 score to 88, an improvement of about 5 percent over the score with the integrated graphics. The Sapphire card's gain was more modest, increasing the WorldBench 5 score to 86, a plus of about 2 percent. Though both dedicated budget cards made daily tasks slightly faster, we were happily surprised at how the integrated graphics stood up in our tests.
As expected, gaming got the most gains. Our test system could not run Battlefield 2 with the integrated graphics, but it was able to achieve a very smooth 43 frames per second with the XFX and a barely playable 25 fps with the Sapphire. Half-Life 2 also seriously improved from the unplayable 11 fps achieved with the integrated graphics, which also had problems rendering some effects.
These test results suggest that even an inexpensive graphics card can make your upgradable PC with integrated graphics faster. A new card can definitely provide you with more output options, as well, such as S-Video-out and multiple monitor connections. Gaming certainly receives the greatest benefit: Although neither card was as quick as the much more expensive models we tested, both produced improvements over the integrated graphics.
In short, we found that even an upgradable PC with newer integrated graphics could achieve modest gains with a $100 card. Moreover, it's clear that such an addition should give an older upgradable system built with less-modern integrated graphics new power and a new lease on life.
Cheap Cards, Modest Gains
Even budget cards help boost system and gaming performance versus what you get with integrated graphics.
How We Test
For 'Two Cards or One, That Is the Question'
In this section of the February 2006 graphics card roundup, we tested both a mainstream and a high-end SLI graphics card combination using Alienware's Aurora 7500 SLI system.
This system featured a 2.8-GHz-Athlon 64 FX-57 CPU, 1GB DDR400 SDRAM, and a striped RAID hard-drive configuration. We recorded the frame rates of a variety of games at 1024 by 768 and 1600 by 1200 resolutions with and without 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled.
Games included Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2, Quake 4, and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.
For '$100 Cards Bump Up Performance, on a Budget'
In this section, we wanted to get an idea of what benefits a $100 graphics card could give to an upgradable system with integrated graphics. We tested a couple of these low-cost cards using a $1395 Dell Dimension 5150 system.
After running a series of tests using the Graphics Media Accelerator 950 chip that was integrated in the Dell's Intel 945G chip set, we upgraded the system with two value-oriented PCI Express graphics cards.
The Dell system also featured a 3.2GHz-Pentium D 640 processor, 512MB DDR2-400 SDRAM, and a 250GB hard drive. We recorded the frame rates of a variety of games at 1024 by 768 and 1600 by 1200 resolutions with and without 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled.
Games included Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2, Quake 4, and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.
We also tested each setup with our real-world productivity application benchmark suite, WorldBench 5.
How We Test Graphics Cards
A new suite of tests for a new generation of cards: PC World's testing philosophy has always been--and continues to be--to evaluate computer products in real-world settings, with applications that an average PC user is likely to use day in and day out.
Accordingly, the PC World Test Center has introduced a new suite of graphics card tests featuring the latest games that better represent today's real-world use. Why games? Because that's where the most sophisticated and demanding programming tends to occur, and is generally what graphic cards are purchased for. Even if you're not planning to use a new graphics card specifically for games, these tests are still the best way to evaluate a card.
Our February 2006 graphics card roundup included two Top 5 charts: mainstream ($150 to $299) and power ($300 and higher). For these charts we tested each graphics card on a 2.4-GHz-Athlon 64 4000+ system with 2GB DDR400 SDRAM and a striped RAID hard-drive configuration.
We recorded the frame rates of a variety of games at resolutions of 1024 by 768 and 1600 by 1200 pixels with and without 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled (where supported). The games we used included Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2, Quake 4, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Far Cry, Doom3, Halo, and Unreal Tournament 2004.
We also recorded the frame rates of a variety of animations in Autodesk's 3ds Max version 8, an industry-standard 3D modeling application. 3ds max is run at the desktop resolution of 1280 by 1024 in both DirectX 9 and OpenGL modes.
Besides performance, each card is evaluated on several aspects, including its specifications, price, bundled software, and overall design.