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Nvidia has announced its latest family of Fermi laptop graphics chips this week, balancing support for 3D with decent battery life.

Nvidia's new GeForce 400M series of graphics chips will be used by a number of major laptop manufacturers including Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba.

Switchable graphics

All of those aforementioned brands will bring out laptops with Nvidia's 'switchable graphics' Optimus technology, to allow users to switch effortlessly (in the background) between the graphics chip on the motherboard and the more powerful discrete (but power-hungry) discrete graphics chip when needed.

A lot of new laptops from these manufacturers will also be supporting stereoscopic 3D under the Nvidia 3D Vision brand, with the likes of Asus and Toshiba already marketing such products.

Nvidia released seven new graphics chips today, with the GeForce GTX 470M and GTX 460M at the top of the range for hardcore gamers and power users.

The Fermi family

The chips are all based on Nvidia's Fermi architecture, with Nvidia claiming that they are 40 per cent faster than its previous GeForce 300M series chips.

Nvidia also says its new graphics chips for laptops are three times faster than Intel's integrated graphics chips for tasks such as editing and sharing high-definition video.

Look out for a number of new 3D Vision laptops on the way later this year, including the Asus G53Jw, with a GeForce GTX 460M graphics chip, and the Acer Aspire 5745DG with a GeForce GTX 425M chip. Asus is also set to launch its 3D all-in-one PC, the Asus ET2400XVT which will feature a GeForce GTX 460M graphics chip.

Via Nvidia

AMD has decided it's time to put ATI firmly in the bin. The chip manufacturer bought graphics giant ATI back in 2006 and has traded off the name ever since.

However, the Phenom-maker has now decided that it's time for AMD to take over completely and the Radeon graphics brand will now be proceeded by the AMD name, though the red colour will be retained.

In a conference call with TechRadar, John Volkmann, vice president of Strategic Communications at AMD said that "we've looked very hard at is the role of the ATI brand. We [previously] chose not to change for very good reasons.

"[Now] do we have permission to do that? Our partners and our customers also have a role to play."

AMD-less logo

But as well as a Radeon logo featuring the AMD logo, there is also a plain logo that just features the words Radeon Graphics.

"That's for anyone in our system who doesn't want to take the hard cut over the AMD brand" explains Volkmann.

"Some [partners] say they would prefer a transitional strategy, a two step process. We fully expect to transfer everybody to the [AMD Radeon] logos," continues Volkmann.

But the AMD slide deck shows a brand treatment alongside an Intel Core logo – no AMD branding is present aside from the word Radeon – surely a strange move?

Volkmann was bullish when talking about the move. "When it comes to our brands the ATI and Radeon brands are equally strong.

"Secondly we learnt that the combination of AMD and Radeon is stronger than ATI and Radeon," he continued.

The change will happen with all new products – older cards will still have the ATI branding. AMD carried out research in seven territories (including the UK) when deciding about the brand.

Volkmann said the findings gave AMD "permission to proceed."

"In our minds the timing couldn't be better," he said. "Our AMD graphics business [is] executing well, culminating in AMD recently taking overall leadership in discrete graphics market share.

Partner view

But what about the partners? "We view the decision by AMD to consolidate under one brand as a good move," says Adrian Thompson, responsible for international marketing at Sapphire Technology. "It will ultimately lead to broader recognition of AMD as a CPU and GPU powerhouse."

Eddie Memon, senior VP of marketing at XFX says that they did have some reservation about the move. "AMD then shared with us the extensive market research that supports this initiative and we now view the transition as an important step in establishing an even stronger worldwide brand."

We've already rounded up the best sub-£100 graphics cards, and now it's onto the sub-£200 pixel workhorses. It's a different kettle of microchips entirely, and it's in this price bracket that you start to see the kind of GPUs that offer serious gaming performance.

Both Nvidia and AMD have cards in this price bracket, and they both put up quite a fight.

It's harder to find different chipsets in this price range than it is under £100, so we've taken the ones we've reviewed recently and looked at the various flavours manufacturers sell them in. The cards are all presented in price order.

There's a great amount of variety in there, and if you're looking to build a cheap computer capable of running Crysis in the highest settings, you've come to the right place.

1. XFX Radeon HD 4890 - £110

It may lack DirectX 11 support, but the HD 4890 is still a killer card, and it performed better than both the 5770 and 5830 graphics cards. Our chief complaint when we reviewed it was the price, but it's now available for just £110. Add to this AMD's proven, bullet-proof architecture - it'll run Crysis in maximum settings - and you've got a hell of a gaming card for very little money. If you don't mind being a bit behind the times.

Read our Gigabyte XFX Radeon HD 4890 review

2. MSI R5770 Hawk - £134

The jury's still out on whether or not it's worth buying a DirectX 11 graphics card, but this MSI effort is pretty spiffing, especially given the low price point. Although it's only got a 128-bit memory bus, the faster GDDR5 memory means it's able to deliver incredible results in all but the uber-demanding Crysis: Warhead. The price isn't too bad, either, and MSI has pre-overclocked the card for maximum performance. We just can't help but wonder what it would be like with a 256-bit bus, though.

Read our Gigabyte MSI R5770 Hawk review

3. BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC - £151

Sitting squarely between AMD's 4870 and 4890, Nvidia's card can give them both a run for their money. It may be getting on a bit, but it's still a cracking card, and it gave good results in our tests. In performance and price, it may err a bit too closely to AMD's 4870, but that's a good thing - the only thing you've got to choose is which manufacturer you want to give your love to.

Read our BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC review

4. Zotac GeForce GTX 275 AMP! - £172

Simply the best graphics card available at the time our review was written last year, it's still a wonderful bit of kit. It packs a 448-bit memory bus to let all that graphical goodness flow nicely, and what's more is that this pre-overclocked version bumps up the already-decent shader, GPU and memory clocks. The result is a card that performs just as well as Nvidia's pricier GTX 285, plus you get all Nvidia's CUDA and PhysX goodness.

Read our Zotac GeForce GTX 275 AMP! review

5. Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4890 Toxic - £174

The Toxic's main selling point isn't that it's poisonous, but that it includes Sapphire's proprietary Vapor-X technology. This relies on thermodynamics to cool the GPU, and it works very, very well. If you're a novice in the world of graphics card overclocking, this is the card for you: the Vapor-X is much more forgiving than stock coolers. Add to this excellent gaming performance out of the box, and the Toxic is a great card made even better.

Read our Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4890 Toxic review

6. Zotac GTX 260 Amp2! - £176

So good it deserves an exclamation mark, Zotac's GTX 260 includes 216 stream processors, rather than the GTX 260's standard 192. What on earth does that mean? Basically, it's a bit faster than your standard chip, although not hugely so - our benchmarks were much the same as the original card's. But when we reviewed it the price was a tad too high at £235, but now that's tumbled it's worth looking into.

Read our Zotac GTX 260 Amp2! review

7. Asus EAH5830 DirectCU - £183

Asus' version of AMD's ultra-brilliant 5830 is the cheapest DirectX 11 graphics card in our round-up. Essentially a pruned version of the 5870, it still includes a whopping 1,120 stream processors, and a 256-bit memory bus. Asus has included its own overclocking software, which makes getting more performance out of the card a doddle. Admittedly, there are better-performing AMD cards out there for just a little bit more, but if you've got exactly £183, it's the card for you.

Read our Asus EAH5830 DirectCU review

8. EVGA Superclocked GTX 460 768MB - £188

It may only include a humble 768MB of memory, but EVGA has overclocked this GTX 460 to the point of no return, and into the realms of incredibly high benchmarks. It scored a whopping 38 frames per second in the verdant tropics of Just Cause 2, although it did lose out to Zotac's non-overclocked card in some tests. But the best bit is EVGA's 10-year warranty - it's truly a card for life. If we're still playing games in 10 years' time.

Read our EVGA Superclocked GTX 460 768MB review

9. Zotac GeForce GTX 460 1GB - £200

Most cheaper graphics cards are merely chopped-back versions of high end cards, but Nvidia went back to the drawing board with the GTX 460, perhaps understanding the importance of the price point. It's a moved that paid off, with the re-jigged GPU pumping out smooth frames per second in all our tests, and even providing a bit of all-important overclocking headroom. It's also DirectX 11 friendly, so you can enjoy those beautifully tesselated flags and puddles..

Read our Zotac GeForce GTX 460 1GB review

10. ATI Radeon 5850 - £200

We're truly in the lofty heights of graphics cards now, with both Nvidia and AMD's top chips floating around. The latter's 5850 is a stripped-back version of the far pricier 5870, but that also means cooling and efficiency are improved, so there's less noise and heat emanating from your PC. It puts on a hell of a performance, too, able to run the likes of Crysis and Just Cause 2 without even flinching. It's not the fastest card you can buy, but it definitely gives you the most bang for your buck.

Read our ATI Radeon 5850 review

The fear that used to be attached to running an SLI setup has largely vanished over the last year or so.

Thanks to maturing driver sets and great mid-range cards there really has never been a better time to drop in that second card. And with the incredi-card, the GTX 460, there has rarely been a better SLI card either.

So thankfully the thrill that was also attached to the idea of running a bleeding-edge SLI system hasn't gone, but now it's a far more practical solution. In fact you may find us telling you that in many cases two really is better than one.

Previously we'd have always said that for the best day-to-day performance for your money you should always go for the fastest single-GPU card your money would allow. Now it's not so black and white as even the high-end cards are struggling to compete with a pair of mid-range wonders like the GTX 460.

The GTX 460 arrived last month and wowed us with its double-ended loving of both fantastic value and great 3D performance. The only slight fly in the ointment was the fact that it arrived in two very different spins from the outset.

We had both the full-fat 1GB versions as well as the cut-down 768MB cards. With barely £20 separating the two it was a no-brainer at that level which card to go for – the 1GB card, especially at the higher-end of the desktop resolution scale, was a clear winner. The limited memory size and bus, combined with a fair few less ROPs, meant the 768MB card suffered by comparison to its smarter sibling.

Both versions of the card though carry the same redesigned Fermi GPU from Nvidia. The GF104 chip is a far more streamlined version of the original Fermi chip that powers the £400 GTX 480. Nvidia has managed to cram more of the good stuff into less streaming multiprocessors making for a high-performing card that costs far less to produce.

Poor GTX 480…

The GF104 chip also has something else up its sleeve. Well actually it's more like under its hat; you see there is so much headroom in there for this chip that you can seriously overclock even the stock cards with the basic Nvidia reference cooler.

An overclocked 1GB card will then hit the same sort of speeds as a GTX 470, with an overclocked 768MB card not too far behind it. So what can they do when you get a pair of twins on the case?

The simple answer is astonish. That's what these cards can do, because now there is simply no reason to go out and pick up the top end cards if you've got a mammoth display because a pair of either version of the GTX 460 will do better. That's right, you're spending less and getting more. The diminishing returns that have dogged the SLI dream for years is a thing of the past.

The simple comparison is Nvidia's top-of-the-line card, and the first of the Fermi lineup to arrive, the GTX 480. At the time of launch we got all hot under the collar about it. Not just because it was blisteringly fast for a single-GPU card, but because it was so blisteringly hot in itself that it rendered all the air-conditioning in the building irrelevant.

• Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 review

That card has since dropped in price to a vaguely reasonable £390-odd. Interesting as if you picked up a pair of these EVGA Superclocked GTX 460 768MB cards that would set you back…that's right…£390-odd. It's even more interesting in light of the bargainous nature of Inno3D's reference 1GB cards that can be had for as little as £360 for the pair.

• EVGA Superclocked GTX 460 768MB review

Both sets of GTX 460s, irrespective of memory constraints, absolutely hose their GTX 480 daddy in practically all metrics, most especially at the high-end 2560x1600 resolution.

• Zotac GeForce GTX 460 1GB review

As for AMD's top card de jour, the £500 multi-GPU HD 5970, it actually stands up better than the GTX 480. But then for the cash you'd hope so. Unfortunately for AMD though it doesn't fare /much/ better. The Just Cause 2 benchmark is the only place the Texans can hold their head up high, in DiRT2 and Far Cry 2 it lags behind noticeably.

Double the fun

Interestingly a pair of overclocked 768MB cards actually beats a pair of the stock-clocked 1GB GTX 460s at the 22-inch res of 1680x1050. It's only by a little way, and notably not in the tessellation-heavy Heaven benchmark, but it means that potentially you could hit these speeds for only £300.

How? Well, EVGA's Superclocked cards are still only reference cards, admittedly they are hand-picked, and factory overclocked, but they are still just the basic GTX 460. You can pick up a Palit GTX 460 768MB for only £150, and that comes with its own cooler too.

Theoretically then overclocking two of these babies, even up past what the Superclocked cards are sitting at, will give you the sort of performance people with GTX 480s warming up their PCs would cry for.

We are aware though that realistically few of us can actually be bothered going through the inevitably slow process of safe overclocking, or are willing to take the risk with their just-unwrapped hardware. If you do still wanna hit the same performance heights then a stock-clocked 1GB will do just as well for £350-odd.

Essentially what this all means is that if you're looking for something to power that 30-inch panel you've always wanted to have running in its native resolution a pair of GTX 460s is the way to go. Forget both of Nvidia and AMD's top cards, this will get your more performance and for less cash.

The only choice is then which do you go for? If you're up for a bit of easy overclocking on a budget picking up a pair of £150 GTX 460 768MB cards will suit you down to the ground. If you don't want to take the risk then a pair of 1GB cards will give you almost the same overclocked performance for only £50 more.

The Superclocked cards though still have a hard time justifying themselves. Sure they give impressive performance and for the same price as a GTX 480, but the cheaper stock 768MB and 1GB versions will keep you just as happy in your SLI gaming.

In terms of all-round performance both versions of the GTX 460 in SLI have the top-end cards beaten from both schools. All of these benchmarks were run with the top settings and all at the relevant 2560x1600 resolution.

The £350 1GB setup is easily the star of the show, only dropping points to the HD 5970 in Just Cause 2, and only then by 3fps. It also costs £150 less as a setup compared to the AMD monster…

Tessellation performance

Heaven 2.0 – FPS: higher is better

• SC GTX 460 768MB - 20
• Stock GTX 460 1GB - 25
• GTX 480 - 21
• HD 5970 – 20

DX11 gaming performance

DiRT 2 – FPS: higher is better

• SC GTX 460 768MB - 76
• Stock GTX 460 1GB - 76
• GTX 480 - 56
• HD 5970 – 71

DX10 gaming performance

Just Cause 2 – FPS: higher is better

• SC GTX 460 768MB - 33
• Stock GTX 460 1GB - 32
• GTX 480 - 26
• HD 5970 – 35

Far Cry 2 – FPS: higher is better

• SC GTX 460 768MB - 71
• Stock GTX 460 1GB - 82
• GTX 480 - 64
• HD 5970 – 72

Platform price – Sterling: cheaper is better

• SC GTX 460 768MB - £390
• Stock GTX 460 1GB - £350
• GTX 480 - £390
• HD 5970 - £500

There's a golden rule for building a cheap PC: never spend more than £100 on a single component. Of course, the graphics card is the most essential piece of equipment if you're building a gaming rig, but you needn't break the bank to get something capable of running the latest games.

In fact, the PC games market has plateaued as we wait for the low-powered console boys to catch up. This means that you don't have to spend a small fortune to get a graphics card capable of outpowering consoles by an order of magnitude.

We've rounded up 10 of the best sub-£100 cards ordered by price. And even if you've decided which side of the AMD/Nvidia battle you want to take, there's a lot of choice.

1. AMD Radeon HD 5450 - £32

It's never going to be able to power the likes of Crysis or Just Cause 2, but AMD's cheapest entry in the 5000 series is still a fully fledged DirectX 11 card. What's more is that the AMD Radeon HD 5450 silent passive cooling and DVI-out make it ideal for a media centre PC set up, and you'll be able to get a few sessions of World of WarCraft out of it. Best of all is the price: this Sapphire flavour costs a wallet-pleasing £32.

2. AMD Radeon HD 4670 - £53

It may be almost two years since we reviewed AMD's HD 4670, but it still packs a graphical punch. It's not DirectX 11 compatible, but it will provide the necessary DirectX 10.1 fireworks. It's also powered directly from the PCI-Express interface, which makes it ideal for media centre PC setups. Admittedly, it's not going to be able to provide top-notch performance at high resolutions, but if you're only running a wee monitor it's perfect.

Read our AMD Radeon HD 4670 review

3. AMD Radeon HD 5570 - £61

Despite its diminutive size, the Radeon HD 5570 impressed us with its all-round decent gaming performance, which is largely down to its whopping 1GB of RAM. Again, this will be right at home in a media centre, with its half-height form not taking up too much room. It's also got all the right outputs in all the right places - VGA, HDMI and DVI. Our chief complaint on its release was the asking price, but now that's reduced it's well worth looking into.

Read our AMD Radeon HD 5570 review

4. Nvidia GeForce 9600GT - £70

If you're firmly pitched in the Nvidia camp, this is the cheapo card for you. While it's true that the processor is lagging behind similarly priced AMD and Nvidia cards, it still pumps out impressive gaming performance, and is capable of high frame rates on a 24-inch monitor. Perfect for a second PC for the kids, or stick it in a secondary slot in your machine and take advantage of Nvidia's CUDA extra processing power.

Read our Nvidia GeForce 9600GT review

5. AMD Radeon HD 4850 - £77

It may be getting a bit long in the tooth, but the HD 4850 is half the price it was when it came out, and it's still a killer graphics card. If you can forgo the DirectX 11 support, you'll find a card that's capable of many wonderous things - including 41 frames per second on notorious GPU-hogger Crysis. If you don't mind stepping back in time a couple of years to save a few quid, it's a winner.

Read our AMD Radeon HD 4850 review

6. Nvidia GeForce GT 240 - £80

Unfortunately, Nvidia's GTS 250 is still sitting slightly above the £100 mark, so we can't include it in this round-up. However, you can pick up its little brother - the GT 240 - for a lot less. In spite of its day-glo looks, this is yet another card perfect for a media centre: quiet fan, low power drain and a host of outputs make it ideal. You're not going to be doing high-end gaming on this, but the pre-overclocked GPU still cranked out a respectable 26 frames per second in Far Cry 2.

Read our Nvidia GeForce GT 240 review

7. Nvidia GeForce 9800GT - £84

As the name suggests, this is the next model up from the 9600GT. Essentially an update of Nvidia's legendary 8800GT, it's not a bad little card, especially given that games have moved on so little in terms of graphical requirements. It's not quite up there with AMD's similarly priced HD4770, but you are getting a whole whack of Nvidia processing extras chucked in free. The passively cooled version of the card (pictured) - which is totally silent - will set you back an extra £20.

Read our Nvidia GeForce 9800GT review

8. AMD Radeon 5670 HD - £90

It's a quarter of a HD 5870, but it's still roughly twice as good as the GPUs you'll find in modern consoles. PC gaming WIN. The 5670HD happily chugged out decent framerates in the insatiably popular Modern Warfare 2, and Asus claims its version is completely dust-proof, so you needn't worry about it sucking up the contents of your carpet, Dyson-style. If you're keen to try DirectX 11 gaming without spending the earth, it's the card for you.

Read our AMD Radeon 5670 HD review

9. AMD Radeon HD 4770 - £90

A minor miracle of micro-engineering, and a heavenly sight for your bank balance, the HD 4770 beat us round the head with our initial scepticism by being able to handle every graphics test we could throw at it. There is a caveat: you'll have to turn off anti-aliasing to get smooth framerates on larger displays, but it's still as solid as ever. Only the memory bandwidth holds it back from being as good as cards twice its price.

Read our AMD Radeon HD 4770 review

10. AMD Radeon HD 5750 - £100

Teetering on the edge our price criteria, the HD 5750 is undoubtedly the best card you can buy if you've got exactly £100. It's fully DirectX 11-upped, and manages to hit decent frame rates at high resolutions - 23 frames per second in Far Cry 2 is not to be balked at on such a cheap card. At the time of reviewing, it was a tad too close to the HD 5770, but now it's cheaper it's well worth considering.

Read our AMD Radeon HD 5750 review

The GeForce GTX 480 is the first of Nvidia's new Fermi cards that we had the pleasure of playing with and it's one molten beast of a graphics card. In our benchmarks it has regularly hit the 90°C mark and took a layer or two of skin off our unprotected fingers.

Its little brother, the GTX 470 is a far more sedate fella, in heat terms at least. So ripe for a bit of judicious overclocking then?

In our review the GTX 470 proved itself to be an awfully impressive card, capably outperforming the vanilla Radeon HD 5870 that it has been directly pitched up against in almost every benchmark available.

Even at full load though the cutdown GF 100 GPU inside doesn't reach anywhere near the heat of the faster GTX 480. That may be down to a more sensible fan profile management in the drivers than on the bigger card. Just don't expect it to be quiet runner when it's really making an effort in the cooling stakes.

With AMD timing the release of its overclocked, and, optionally DRAM heavier, HD 5870s to coincide with the release of Nvidia's more affordable Fermi card, you might still need a bit of extra pace from your GTX 470 in order to maintain that performance lead.

And this is where we come in, as we've spent some time assessing just how much we can get out of this, the reference design, before it falls over and melts silicon juice all over our beloved test rig. We've scorched our fingers, now you can too.

Obviously it's worth stating that we will accept no responsibility at all if you manage to irrevocably b0rk your brand new, £320 graphics card should you decide to follow these instructions. Overclocking can be a harsh and dangerous world at times. Though today's silicon is fairly robust, and if you're patient and take your time to find the performance sweet spot of your GPU, there is only a little risk to your card, but there is definitely still a risk. Consider yourself warned.

So without further ado, let's crank the air-conditioning up to full, get the fire extinguishers at the ready and set to tweaking the nuts off of Nvidia's latest graphics card.

1. The first thing you need to do is make sure you've got the latest Nvidia drivers for your card. Head to www.nvidia.co.uk and hit the Download Drivers link to find them.

2. Now, to effectively overclock either of the latest Fermi cards you'll have to pick up the latest version of EVGA's Precision software.

3. We've been big fans of MSI's Afterburner software for overclocking graphics, but EVGA's is the only one at the time of writing with proper access to Nvidia's GPU clocks. Head to www.evga.com/precision for the free download.

As we've said, there is always a risk to your card from overclocking, and hence putting extra stress on the GPU, but you can minimise the danger by taking it very slowly and being methodical in your approach.

Part of the process is testing the card's stability after every step to keep an eye out for early signs, such as graphical artefacts. We use the Heaven 2.0 benchmark as a stress-testing tool as it pushes even the latest cards to their very limit. Head to www.unigine.com/download for the free download.

4. Now it's time to get your hands dirty and start messing with the clocks. Starting with the memory first; increase the clockspeed in small increments, maybe 5 to 10MHz steps, and test for a few minutes after each rise.

Keep going until you begin to see the first signs of graphical artefacting, then step back to the previous setting and test again. Keep rolling back until you're happy the memory clock is stable.

Now move onto the core and shader clocks. In this version these clocks are linked so you only need to raise the shader clocks to up the core clockspeed too.

5. Drop the memory clock back down to its default speed and begin upping the shader clock in the same small increments until you start to see processor artefacting then again roll back until its stable. The types of artefacts you'll see will vary depending on whether it's a memory artefact or a processor artefact.

If it's a memory problem then you'll see it manifest itself as solid blocks of colours and if it's a processor issue you'll see pixel-sized dots appear on-screen or bright flashes. When that happens it's time to stop stressing.

Now you should be able to raise both the clockspeeds together. Stress test at the highest ratings you managed individually then keep stepping back in 5 to 10MHz increments until you achieve a stable overclock. Once you're initially happy you've found the mark then it's time to do some longer stress testing to make sure.

When you're sure, hit the 'Apply at startup' tab on the Precision control panel and you're ready to roll next time you boot. Job done.

For many a year even the thought of setting up a multi-GPU system has caused the most tech-savvy of PC enthusiasts to eat their own heads in complete and utter frustration.

It wasn't just the fact that the mere action of setting a CrossFire or SLI system up was a tiring process of exacting component matching, BIOS tweaking and software hell, promptly followed by mental breakdown.

The fact remained that if you were one of the few with that magical golden ticket, a functional multi-GPU system, you didn't actually get that much of a performance return for the extra silicon you'd painstakingly laid in your rig.

Originally the big sell was the idea of picking up a mid-range graphics card now, then once the thirst for upgrading became too strong to countenance you could pick up another of those cards, drop it in your rig and hey-presto a million times better performance.

Many an SLI or CrossFire motherboards got sold on the back of this idea, to people wanting the ephemeral security of perceived future-proofing. Obviously it wasn't that simple and never quite turned out to give the sort of returns you really desired or deserved.

And the fact was that by the time you came to upgrade to another of those mid-range cards they had become so passé that you would be just as well spending the same again on a superior single-GPU card. And then you wouldn't have to cope with the vagaries of multi-GPU driver support either…

Software-wise though things have been steadily improving. No longer do we have the headaches we once did trying to get our drivers to recognise the extra GPUs, and hot-fixes come thick and fast to solve the inevitable problems that accompany new games releases. Yes, DiRT2, we're looking straight at you.

The rise of the multi-GPU single card has helped this; specifically AMD's change in approach leaving the high-end of its graphics options to those monstrous, dual-wielding pixel pushers. So now the multi-GPU setup is all about the high-end performance systems not adding in extra boards somewhere down the line.

That still left the fact that, at best, you were looking at a 60 per cent increase for adding in a second card, with that increase diminishing as you moved to triple SLI or quad CrossFire. But with both Nvidia and AMD releasing its new generation of DX11 compatible graphics cards it's time to see if you're still better off buying the fastest card you can or whether two cards are finally better than one.

Nvidia GeForce GTS 250

Representing the last generation of graphics we've got Nvidia's lower-end cards offering a multi-GPU setup for less than £200 - namely the GTS 250.

In modern DirectX 10 gaming you're looking at an average percentage increase that tops out just under the 70 per cent mark when you factor in a second card. With the extra graphics memory and processing power it's not a bad boost for the cash.

Obviously, when you're looking at the tougher benchmarks of STALKER: Call of Pripyat and Metro 2033 the results tail off considerably given the GPU's a couple generations out of date now.

Still, if you've got a GTS 250 sitting in your rig and a 1,680 x 1,050 monitor strapped to it, for less than £100 you can be hitting over 30fps with everything turned on in Just Cause 2.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 470

The Heaven benchmark scales brilliantly with multiple GPUs, and the GTX 470 actually manages to post a 101 per cent increase.

The results in-game aren't quite so compelling though, but the key thing to note is the disparity between the increase in the higher resolutions compared to the lower. The average increase at 2,560 x 1,600 is a remarkably impressive 80 per cent, giving a comparatively huge boost to the lucky few out there with such large-screen gaming habits.

On the flip side if you're looking to max out the frame rates at the lower res of 1,680 x 1,050 you'll be disappointed with an average increase of only 32 per cent. Still, this shows where the emphasis for modern SLI is going – the big screens.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 480

As you'd expect from essentially the exact same architecture the performance increase from adding in a second GTX 480 is almost identical to that gained by the GTX 470.

That said though, looking at the raw figures proves that if you want the fastest dual-GPU setup going, then it's time to stump up the cash and drop two of Nvidia's most powerful Fermi cards in the same machine.

That is then a graphics setup totalling almost £1,000 but when you're picking up over 100fps in both DiRT2 and Far Cry 2 at 2,560 x 1,600 on the highest settings your eyes might tell you it's worth it.

High-res gaming is where the Fermi card's SLI emphasis lies, and with these figures it's quite hard to disagree with Nvidia on this one.

ATI Radeon HD 5770

It's only the relatively poor performance increases in Just Cause 2 that stops the low-end cards of this CrossFire test posting a more impressive average increase with a second card.

The 80 per cent and 85 per cent in Far Cry 2 at 2,560 x 1,600 and 1,680 x 1,050 respectively boasts better scaling than both NVIDIA's Fermi cards.

At £260 for a pair of HD 5770s though you're getting significantly better performance than a single HD 5850, which is practically the same price. With the improvements, by AMD's driver team especially, in multi-GPU gaming you actually are better off with twin HD 5770s than a single HD 5850.

The most surprising thing though is the fact that twin HD 5770s actually beat a single GTX 470. Impressive stuff.

ATI Radeon HD 5850

If you're rocking an existing HD 5850 then the news is good. Dropping in a second card will give you some serious performance gains, especially at the high-end resolutions.

In terms of all round speed gains the HD 5850 is the best that AMD has to offer with an average increase of just over 70 per cent at 2,560 x 1,600. That's behind the impressive increases of around 80 per cent that you get with twin Nvidia cards though, but CrossFire HD 5850s still represent a conundrum.

They're almost on par with the HD 5970, but significantly faster almost across the board compared to the GTX 480, a card that's only £30 cheaper than two of these at best.

AMD's multi-GPU strategy seems to be paying off.

AMD Radeon HD 5870

These are the cards that have been propping up the fastest gaming PCs for over half a year. Put together two HD 5870's cost almost £100 more expensive than the HD 5970, but offer much more in the way of gaming performance.

That said though we're into the realms of diminishing returns as the relatively moderate gains you pick up over the HD 5970 hardly justify the extra outlay.

The interesting thing though is that with the latest Catalyst drivers improving AMD's gaming performance so much it has propelled the HD 5870 ahead of the GTX 470 in single and, despite lower percentage performance gains, in dual-card configurations.

AMD's focus on the multi-GPU to help prop up it's high-end components means it works across the board.

So SLI and CrossFire are really starting to make a name for themselves then. Ease of installation and the burgeoning returns you get for adding in the extra card now makes it a viable proposition.

As we can see though, it's Nvidia that has made the most gains in its multi-GPU technology in the performance sector. Both of its latest cards are hitting an average percentage frame rate increase of 80 per cent at the eye-bleeding resolution of 2,560 x 1,600.

It has conceded the lower end of the scale, garnering a pretty poor showing of 32 per cent at 1,680 x 1,050. But you're only going to be forking out for an extra £300 (or so) for a graphics card, if you're powering a monitor with a screen large enough to do it justice.

Despite putting much of its high-end emphasis on the value of its multi-GPU solution, the HD 5970, AMD hasn't quite got the same performance boost when it comes to adding in that extra card. Sure it's 5 series cards are better than the Fermis at the lower end, but only the HD 5850 manages to post percentage gains of over 70 per cent.

Where AMD can compete though is in the price/performance metrics. Since it released the 10.4 version of its Catalyst drivers the GTX 470 has taken a bit of a pounding. The HD 5770 in CrossFire is easily comparable in performance terms with the slower Fermi card, and a pair of them are also significantly cheaper. They likewise put the equivalently priced HD 5850 to shame and also manage to hit over 60 per cent average percentage gains too.

Click here to see the high-res version

Top performance though has to go to the insane numbers you get out of the GTX 480 when it's got a twin sat next to it. Still, that's nearly £1,000-worth of graphical componentry and unless you're powering three 30-inch panels they're hardly worth the cash.

But this whole multi-GPU thing is now relevant, rather than being simply a technical demo for GPU makers to show what their graphical gems are capable of, cash notwithstanding. And it's easy too.

At no point in the testing of these six different setups did I encounter any frustrating problems born of multi-GPU drivers. A simple tick-box in the relevant driver panels in Windows was all it took to get them playing nice.

On the AMD side too you're not looking at spending more cash just for the possibility of adding in a second card later on; most full size mobos these days are rocking multiple PCI-e lanes with CrossFire support.

On the Nvidia side things are a mite stickier; tracking down SLI compatible boards is a tougher ask and can be pricer too. But the future's bright and in the GTX 470's Heaven 2.0 benchmark we've actually seen the first time where adding a second card more than doubles performance.

Nvidia's dominance in the percentage increase stakes means that suddenly SLI is going to be a lot more interesting this summer when the mid-range Fermi cards tip up.

Is Nvidia's new Geforce GTX 460 the finest pixel pumper you can buy?

It's certainly the most cost effective performance graphics card of the moment. But did you know it has hidden performance reserves ready and waiting to be unlocked?

Put simply, the GTX 460 overclocks better than any high performance in recent memory. Here's how to overclock the GeForce GTX 460.

1. Tool up

Overclocking the GTX 460 is easy. Even better, it's free. All you need is a pair of software tools, one to tweak the card's settings, the other to make sure they've been properly applied. A number of options are available to achieve the first.

Our current favourite is MSI's Afterburner utility. It's a nicely put together app which makes all the necessary controls available and provides a handy visual aid in the form of graphs which track changes in frequency and operating temperature – and yes, it does work on non-MSI boards. The other item you want GPU-Z, the essential tool for identifying and analysing graphics chips.

2. Getting to know you

Fire up Afterburner and you'll be presented with a number of sliders for settings including core voltage, core clock, shader clock, memory clock and fan speed. However, GTX 460 features vary from vendor to vendor and some options may be greyed out.

At bare minimum, the core and memory clock will be available. Frankly, that's all you really need. In any case the following warning applies to all cards. Safe overclocking is all about baby steps. In other words, only make changes in small increments. We'd recommend increasing the core clockspeed in steps no larger than 25MHz.

3. Crank up the clocks

The drill goes something like this. Knock the core clock slider up by 25MHz, hit apply, confirm in GPU-Z and then hop into your favourite game. If all is well, jump back to Afterburner and rinse and repeat until you begin to see weird artefacts in-game or your PC crashes. Then do it all again for the memory.

As for the core voltage, dicing with that is more hazardous to your card's health. We'd steer clear unless you know what you are doing. Overclocking mileages will vary, but we'd be surprised if your GTX 460 didn't hit a core clockspeed of at least 825MHz. That's a boost of around 25 per cent. Nice.

The end is nigh for the modern graphics chip. It genuinely pains me to say that. After all, I'm an unapologetic chip aficionado, someone who loves the technology of integrated circuits for the sake of it.

But it's becoming increasingly apparent that GPUs are over-engineered, increasingly irrelevant and almost definitely not long for this world.

The background here involves a confluence of technological trends. The most ominous of these in terms of the GPU's longevity as a discrete component is the architectural convergence of CPUs and GPUs. However, one of the most debilitating symptoms of the graphics chip's terminal malaise is complexity – sheer, pointless complexity.

Take Nvidia's uber pixel pumper, the GeForce GTX 480. It weighs in at three billion transistors. That's getting on for triple the size of Intel's beefiest PC processor, the six-core Core i7-980X. If the GTX 480 was any use, that monster transistor count would actually add to the allure. But the harsh truth is that it isn't – for almost anything.

And that makes it dumb. You see, despite the hype regarding running non-graphics applications on GPUs, there's still very little outside of games that makes more than passing use of a desktop or laptop GPU. More to the point, the number of games demanding a really high-end GPU that are actually worth playing isn't merely a small number. It's zero.

Put it all together and you have a terminal mismatch between the cost and complexity of GPUs and their real-world utility. In truth, I've felt this way for some time. But it's the apparent emergence of a radical alternative to established 3D rendering technologies that really brings home how bloated and ludicrous graphics chips have become.

Revolution in rendering

This alleged revolution in rendering comes from a small Australian software startup known as Unlimited Detail. It's not actually brand spanking new, having been in development for a year or three. But thanks to the random nature of web-based content aggregators, Unlimited Detail was lifted from obscurity recently in a flurry of YouTube-powered publicity.

Anyway, as far as I could tell the basics of this new rendering technology involve ditching polygons in favour of atomic points in 3D space. The claimed result is quite literally unlimited geometric detail. Oh, and the whole thing runs in software at smooth framerates on a conventional PC processor. The GPU doesn't get a look in until it's time to spit out the final 2D images.

You hardly need me to point out it all seems too good to be true. So, there was nothing for it other than to go straight to the source and speak to the guys at Unlimited Detail.

The technical brains are provided by Bruce Dell, a former supermarket manager, while the business nous comes courtesy of Greg Douglas, a games insider formerly of developers Auran.

The idea of using atoms or points is not new, of course. The really clever bit in UD is the 3D search algorithm developed by Dell. The precise details are UD's big secret. But according to Dell, "The algorithm takes point cloud data and files it in a certain way so that it can be quickly sorted and accessed."

When the algorithm searches for points, it doesn't do so indiscriminately. Instead, it only pulls up a single point for each on-screen pixel being rendered. "We only grab the atoms we need for each pixel, we don't touch the others," explains Dell.

In other words, the workload depends on screen resolution, not the underlying geometric detail of the scene being rendered. Thus, an impression of unlimited geometry is created. The UD guys claim the algorithm is so efficient it runs in real-time in a single thread on just one core of a conventional PC processor. Apparently, it will even scale down to simple CPUs in mobile devices.

So far, the only hard evidence for these incredible claims takes the form of a few pre-recorded videos of dubious quality. However, having spoken to the UD pair, I'm happy to confirm they're not only incredibly passionate, but strike me as completely genuine. It's potentially extremely exciting stuff.

Still, even if UD works exactly as advertised, the established players in graphics are hardly going to embrace a technology that instantly renders several decades and billions of dollars of investment obsolete overnight.

You have to assume Nvidia, and to a lesser extent AMD, will resist the idea strongly. But if Unlimited Detail's technology gains any traction at all, GPUs really will look sillier than ever.

The latest figures from Mercury Research have suggested that AMD has overtaken former market leader Nvidia in graphics chips shipped in the second quarter of 2010.

The figures suggest that AMD captured 51 per cent of discrete graphics chip shipments compared to Nvidia's 49 per cent, representing a huge turnaround from a year ago.

Indeed, 2009's second quarter saw AMD with just 41 per cent of the market - making it a 10 per cent year-on-year swing.

Short of predictions

Nvidia has already told the market that its revenues will fall short of predictions, but the company will be keen to stop the rot.

AMD revealed last month that it had shipped 16 million DX11 cards in the past 9 months.

The company's successful 5800 series tapped into the latest DirectX11 technology offered by Microsoft Windows 7 and has reaped the benefits of getting to market first.

3D graphics within your browser has moved a significant step closer, with AMD announcing the availability of the first drivers that support the WebGL industry standard,

The WebGL standard is a key advance, with major companies keen to utilise the hardware in your computer with Open GL and enable much more advanced graphics within browsers.

The AMD OpenGL ES 2.0 driver should enable what many are describing as an 'application-like' browser experience, which could include 3D graphics and enhance the next generation of the internet.

Steadfast supporter

"AMD is a steadfast supporter of industry standards, including those that unlock the power of GPU acceleration," said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, AMD Fusion Experience Program.

"At AMD, we see the future of computing as being intensely visual, requiring a variety of rich media 2D and 3D applications.

"With functionality like the OpenGL ES 2.0 driver and technology breakthroughs made possible by AMD Fusion APUs, we aim to deliver the ideal development platform for immersive experiences both online and natively on virtually any PC form factor."

The OpenGL ES 2.0 driver from AMD will arrive alongside the ATI Catalyst 10.7 beta for OpenGL ES 2.0 which should be available in the course of today.

All currently available AMD graphics products released since 2008 should be able to handle the new drivers, including including ATI Radeon desktop graphics, ATI Mobility Radeon graphics, and ATI FirePro professional graphics cards.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 460 is the most impressive iteration of its Fermi architecture we've seen so far.

As well as being far cheaper than either the GTX 480, GTX 470 or the GTX 465, it's only bettered in performance terms by the £400 GTX 480. Reviewed here are four versions of the new card, from the stock 768MB and 1GB cards to the overclocked beasts.

It's a brand new chip design, slimming the original GF100 GPU down into its more svelte GF104 design. Moving forward it should also allow for improved top-end cards further down the line.

For now though the GTX 460 is a mid-range marvel, with the superlative 1GB version of the card being available for as little as £175 if you shop around.

In the £150-£300 pricepoint there really is no other graphics card worth picking up until you get to the Radeon HD 5870 at the top of that bracket.

We've reviewed at a selection of different versions of the card to give you a full idea of which iterations are worth the outlay.

Zotac GeForce GTX 460 1GB review

EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB review

EVGA Superclocked GeForce GTX 460 768MB review

Asus GeForce GTX 460 768MB TOP review

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AMD has shipped a whopping 16 million DirectX 11-capable graphics cards in the last 9 months, the company has revealed.

Although it posted a net loss of $1.65 billion for the second quarter of 2010, the buoyant nature of its ATI Radeon HD 5000 series was hugely encouraging for the chip giant.

"Robust demand for our latest mobile platforms and solid execution drove record second quarter revenue and a healthy gross margin," said Dirk Meyer, AMD President and CEO.

Steady platform

"Our unmatched combination of microprocessor and graphics capabilities resulted in customers launching a record number of new mobile and desktop platforms," he continued.

"We added Sony as a microprocessor customer and continue to see our existing customers expand their AMD-based platform offerings."

According to AMD's report the graphics card segment of the company showed an eight per cent increase over the last quarter and 87 per cent year on year.

"In just three quarters, AMD has shipped more than 16 million Microsoft DirectX 11-capable GPUs," said AMD.

"The ATI Radeon HD 5000 series remains the industry's only complete top-to-bottom family of DirectX11-compatible graphics solutions."

Asus has announced its new graphics cards to take advantage of Nvidia's 460 GTX GPU - with the Asus ENGTX range promising to be just the job for a 3D gaming rig.

A slew of cards have been or will be announced that use the new 460 GTX chip, and Asus has announced four flavours.

That means, as you may expect, an overclocked and non-overclocked versions of the 1Gb and 768, with the former labelled TOP.

"ASUS ENGTX460 graphics cards enter service as the newest addition to NVIDIA's GeForce 400 Series," said Asus.

Proud

"ASUS is proud to deliver technology that goes further than base reference requirements with exclusives such as DirectCU thermal design, Voltage Tweak overvolting and endurance features GPU Guard, EMI Shield and Fuse Protection.

"On top of cool overclocking capabilities, ASUS ENGTX460 graphics cards are optimized for native performance in Windows 7, delivering mind-blowing graphics to showcase DirectX11 done right, plus full 3D Vision Surround, PhysX and CUDA support."

Asus' latest cards also bring, DirectCU thermal design and Voltage Tweak overclocking.

EVGA has announced its GeForce GTX 460 graphics card, utilising Nvidia's latest GTX 460 GPU.

EVGA's GeForce GTX 460 has been built from the ground up to take advantage of DirectX 11, using the latest mid-range GPU.

"The EVGA GeForce GTX 460 brings next generation gaming performance and features to new price levels," said Bob Klase, VP of Sales at EVGA.

Something for everyone

"Now everyone can experience the ultimate gaming experience with Nvidia 3D Vision Surround, PhysX and DirectX 11 done right!"

EVGA GTX 460 has a UK release date of right now, and there are four flavours – two vanilla and two 'SuperClocked' versions.

MSI has unveiled the N460 GTX Cycone series of graphics cards, taking advantage of Nvidia's latest chip.

MSI's latest card range includes the N460GTX Cyclone 768D5/OC and N460GTX Cyclone 1GD5, and boast MSI's 'Military Class' components and the exclusive Cyclone thermal design with a 9cm PWM fan.

The cards also come with GPU overvoltage support through MSI's afterburner overclocking software – which can apparently boost performance by 30 per cent.

And, MSI believes that it has shaved more than 15 per cent off of the noise generated by the reference design with the N460 GTX series.

Dealing with the heat

"MSI N460GTX Cyclone Series is equipped with the exclusive Cyclone thermal design. After sinking the heat from the GPU with the nickel-plated copper base, two heat pipes evenly transfer the heat to the fins, explains MSI.

"Through a large 9cm PWM fan the huge airflow dissipates the heat very quickly.

"Aside from effectively reducing the GPU temperature compared to the reference cooler, the Cyclone thermal design can reduce noise by up to 15.7%.

"N460GTX Cyclone series maintains a balance between cooling and noise to deliver a quiet and cool platform."

Three cards have currently been announced, including the £134+VAT N460GTX M2D768D5, the £139+VAT Cyclone 768D5/OC and the 1GB £154+VAT N460 GTX460 Cyclone 1GD5.

Nvidia has officially unveiled its GeForce GTX 460 GPU, promising that this is 'DX11 done right!'

Nvidia's latest mid-range card is aimed squarely at those gamers and PC builders looking for the most bang for their buck, with the latest cards to be priced squarely in midrange.

Nvidia is talking up the 'monster tessellation performance' of four times better that competing GPUs, as well as a huge focus on making this a great card for taking advantage of DirectX 11.

Ground up for tessellation

"Built from the ground up for DirectX 11 tessellation, GeForce GTX 460 GPUs deliver monster tessellation performance with up to 4x tessellation performance over competing GPUs," states Nvidia.

"The GTX 460 brings the ultimate next-generation DX11 gaming experience to a new price segment, enabling more gamers than ever to experience incredibly detailed characters, terrain and game environments with blazing fast performance and awesome visuals.

"With full support for Nvidia 3D Vision technology, the GeForce GTX 460 provides the graphics horsepower and video bandwidth needed to experience games and high definition Blu-ray movies in eye-popping stereoscopic 3D."

The GTX 460 range comes in two flavours, the 768MB version priced at $199 (c£135) or a 1GB version priced at $229 (c£150)

As you may imagine, a veritable flood of graphics cards that use the GPU will be flooding the market from the leading manufacturers.

Asus' ROG Ares graphics card has been officially unveiled, promising 'stellar salvation for performance seekers'.

The Republic of Gamers Ares card brings two Radeon HD5870 cores running at 850Mhz, with Asus promising an up to 32 per cent improvement on the reference card.

"The astral design scheme belies overwhelming processing muscle," explains Asus.

"Ares has 3200 stream processors and a cosmic 4GB of GDDR5 RAM clocked at 1.2GHz."

Future-proofing

"This is the kind of power gamers and hobbyists dream of, allowing even the most demanding applications to run fully unabridged while future-proofing for coming attractions, as it will be a long time before Ares finds itself taxed," the release continues.

"It also serves as a superb anchor for overclocking aficionados building a benchmark machine, since the potential for tuning is enormous."

The powerful card is cooled by a 100mm fan as well as 'two outsized oxygen-free, all-copper heatsinks and no less than eight 8mm copper heat sinks on the board'.

Mac vs PC. Microsoft vs Google. Intel vs AMD. There's no shortage of monumental rivalries in the tech industry. But the royal rumble between ATI and Nvidia for dominance of 3D graphics is one of the roughest of the lot.

You could argue the contest is really between AMD and Nvidia. After all, AMD snapped up Canadian graphics outfit ATI back in 2006. For now, however, the ATI brand lives on as AMD's graphics division.

More importantly, however you slice it the histories of ATI and Nvidia have been very closely intertwined. Both started out as specialists in PC graphics and have since branched out into non-PC platforms such as games consoles, mobile devices and set-top boxes.

More recently, ATI's acquisition by AMD seems to have set it on a very different path for the future from Nvidia. But let's start by reminiscing on a few of our favourite ATI vs Nvidia fisticuffs from yesteryear before taking a look at their current offerings.

RIVA and Rage

The early days of graphics on the PC saw 3D cards like Nvidia's RIVA 128 and TNT2 take on ATI's Rage and Rage 128. But it was Nvidia who presaged the modern GPU or Graphics Processing Unit with the mighty GeForce 256 in 1999. It was the first graphics chip with hardware transform and lighting capabilities. And it was fast. Damned fast.

ATI responded in 2000 with the Radeon graphics card. Ever since, successive generations of GeForce and Radeon GPUs have been leapfrogging each other in the race for graphics supremacy. Nvidia had the early advantage with the GeForce, GeForce 2, GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 series arguably having the edge over ATI's Radeon, Radeon 7500 and Radeon 8500.

But in 2002 ATI turned the tables with the awesome Radeon 9700 Pro. The first GPU with fully programmable shaders, the 9700 Pro was massively more powerful than any graphics chip before. It took until early 2003 for Nvidia to respond with the ill-fated GeForce 5800 Ultra, a GPU that never lived up to expectations.

Nvidia was back on form a year later with the GeForce 6800 series. A tit for tat ensued with neither ATI nor Nvidia achieving a clear advantage. It was during this period that Nvidia introduced its revolutionary multi-GPU SLI technology and ATI responded with the copycat Crossfire platform. There really was nothing to separate them.

Radeon rethink

At least, there wasn't until ATI released the underperforming Radeon HD 2900 XT. Like Nvidia's calamitous GeForce FX series, the 2900 arrived late, ran hot, underperformed and couldn't match its opposition, the GeForce 8800 Ultra.

But unlike the GeForce FX, it lead to a fundamental strategic rethink. AMD decided that in future ATI would no longer chase ultimate performance with its top GPU. Instead it would aim for maximum bang for buck and introduce dual-GPU boards to cater for enthusiasts demanding ultra-high performance.

The culmination of this rethink was the Radeon HD 4870. Launched in mid 2008, it was half the price of Nvidia's competing GeForce GTX 280 but delivered at least 80 per cent of the performance. It was a winning combination.

The DX11 era

Of course, graphics technology waits for no man and much has changed since the Radeon HD 4000 series and GeForce GTX 200 hit the market in 2008. Late last year ATI unleashed the Radeon HD 5000 series, the world's first family of graphics chips with support for the latest DirectX 11 multimedia API from Microsoft, as seen in Windows 7 but also available as an update for Windows Vista.

It took a little longer for Nvidia A to respond in kind with the GeForce GTX 400 family. It eventually turned up earlier this year and since then its been these two pixel pumping graphics architectures fighting it out for top DX11 honours.

Topping the current single-GPU tables, therefore, are the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and Nvidia Geforce GTX 480. Thanks to ATI's greater emphasis on value, the GTX 480 weighs in around £100 more expensive at £430 or so.

For the money Nvidia gives you an extra billion transistors for a faintly ridiculous total of three billion. You also get a little more memory as standard, 1.5GB to the 5870's 1GB. However, it's worth noting that 2GB variants of the 5870 are now available for less than the 1.5GB GTX 480.

Anyway, what you don't get from the 480 is a huge performance advantage. Yes it's a little quicker than the 5870. But not nearly as much as it needs to be given the extra cost and complexity.

Cut-down cards

It's a similar story further at the next rung down the graphics ladder. Both ATI and Nvidia offer slightly cut down versions of their top GPUs. The Radeon HD 5850 is yours for £225 and retains 1,440 of the 5870's 1,600 stream shaders. Meanwhile, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 470 weighs in around £295 and packs 448 of Nvidia's mighty CUDA cores. The GTX 480, for the record, has 480 cores.

Once again, the 470 is a little quicker than its ATI equivalent, but it's also much more expensive. From there, things get a little more complicated. ATI does a silly-money dual-GPU Radeon HD 5000 board, the 5970. In most tests of pixel pumping prowess, it's the quickest thing out there (NVIDIA has yet to wheel out a dual-GPU take on the GTX 400 series). But just occasionally its dual-GPU architecture and split-memory set up gets the better of it.

Move into mid-range territory and direct comparisons between ATI and Nvidia are currently a bit tricky. That's because Nvidia has yet to release more affordable chips based on Fermi, the new DX11 architecture that underpins the GTX 480 and 470 GPUs.

Consequently, the Radeon HD 5770 (£125), Radeon HD 5670 (£85) and Radeon HD 5570 (£72) are lording it without any DX11 competition.

Instead, Nvidia makes do with older chipsets based on DX10 tech, such as the GeForce GTS 250 (£125) and GeForce GT 240 (£72).

Advantage Nvidia?

That said, Nvidia has recently released an even more cut-down version of the Fermi chip in the new GeForce GTX 465, on sale now from around £230. But what it really needs is some pukka mid-range DX11 chips to take the fight to AMD. And it needs them soon. Before the end of the year ATI could well release a family of second generation DX11 GPUs.

In the meantime, it's not all bad news for Nvidia. Arguably, it has an edge in at least one important DX11 feature, the hardware tessellator. Designed to spew out huge numbers of polygons and therefore give games more geometric detail and realism than ever before, the tessellator could prove to be the killer feature in DX11. Early tests suggest Nvidia's chips have more tessellation power than ATI's.

Nvidia is also way ahead of ATI when it comes to stereoscopic 3D. Nvidia's 3D Vision technology is the best way to get 3D on your PC today. It works with a large number of games and is also compatible with certain formats of 3D movies including Blu-ray 3D. But like most other 3D display technologies, wearing a pair of geeky goggles is the price of participation.

Sapphire Technology has demonstrated 3D gaming running on three screens using a single graphic card from the company and the ATI Eyefinity multi-monitor functionality.

With 3D already beginning to make a big impact in gaming, graphics card specialists Sapphire is keen to display the latest in PC gaming technology.

The three Zalman Trimon 3D monitors were powered by a Sapphire card with Eyefinity technology.

Drivers and driving

The 3D support was added by running an additional 3D driver from iZ3D, with games like Tom Clancy's Hawx2, Left4Dead2, BattleForge and Dirt2 all shown off.

"This technology demonstrates that games and applications can be displayed in 3D on multiple screens, and run smoothly, without the need for multiple graphics cards or expensive shutter glasses," said Bill Donnelly, Global PR Director for Sapphire.

"This approach uses low cost glasses, and can be run on any system with an ATI-based Sapphire graphics card that has ATI Eyefinity support."

Of course, three 3D monitors, the glasses and the graphics card may make your wallet a little less three dimensional, but we'd certainly like to give the technology a try.