So, is there any choice other than an ATI Radeon-based card? Well, it is very hard to find a reason not to buy one. The Asus V9280S is an awesomely quick card considering it's based around an Nvidia Ti4200, but it is very expensive, being around £20 more than the faster Albatron Medusa Ti4800SE. But, of course, then there is the Gigabyte GV-R9500 PRO, which is only a tenner more than the Asus board and quite a lot faster.

When it comes to entry level cards, the MSI MX440S-VTD8X is very well priced and offers a deal of overclocking, but if you can afford a little more, there's the Sapphire Radeon 9000 All-in-Wonder, which is light years ahead in performance terms and has TV features as well.

As for the out-and-out performance top dog, well there's no competition there. Anything based around ATI's Radeon 9700 PRO is going to blitz the opposition. Gigabyte's offering, the Maya II GV-R9700 PRO, is keenly priced too, for what it offers.

But do you really need an 8X AGP card? In the short term the answer's no; it doesn't offer that much in overall performance gain and it's certainly not worth paying a premium for it. Direct X9 is another matter; although there aren't many games out there using it at the moment, it does offer a degree of future-proofing for your system.

Another thing to consider is whether you really need a new card. Sometimes all that's needed is a driver update. This won't turn a slow card into the fastest, but it may offer enough of an improvement in performance to keep the latest games whizzing along for a few more months. This applies whatever card you have or buy - to get the best out of any graphics card you must keep a very close eye on driver updates.

Whichever graphics card you buy, even the fastest, our glimpse at the forthcoming cards shows that 'fastest' is a transient description. Performance developments in the graphics processor industry move faster than almost anywhere else. This group test gives you a fleeting snapshot of the state of that industry at the moment, but be warned; it won't stay the same for long.