Sli Vs Crossfire

Graphics cards compared: 10 rated

There's one component in your machine that will be superseded by faster and more powerful versions quicker than any other, and that's the graphics processor.

The graphics card is the supermodel part of any modern gaming PC. It, more than anything else, makes your games look beautiful and run as smoothly as a baby's velvet smoking jacket.

So, if you're a gamer and you've got a bit of cash to spend - it's time you looked at some graphics cards compared and rated.

After all, forking out the lot on a new graphics card is the best way to up the frame rate of your favourite games and make the girls think you're attractive, right?

Unfortunately, that's not necessarily the way the graphics game works. The top-performing rigs are always the most well balanced. Put a Ferrari engine into a Mk1 Golf GTi and it will go fast, sure, but you'll fly off the first corner you come to and probably make someone an orphan.

To a certain extent, it's the same with a PC. Obviously it's not going to career off the desk and decapitate a passer-by, but using the fastest graphics card in the world for your rig isn't always going to make it the best machine.

There are a number of key considerations to think of before spending an obscene amount of cash on a GPU, or a pair of GPUs. Number one is, naturally, can you afford it? But we'll skip the personal economics lesson for now.

The second issue is, can you get the most out of it? This is a multi-part question, though, and covers the size of screen you're running, possible bottlenecks in your system (such as OS, CPU and memory) and whether your power supply can handle the extra draw that comes with a top-end graphics card.

Then it all comes down to which card, or combination of cards, suits you best. This is the key point – do you go for a single, high-performance model or opt for a (possibly cheaper) multi-GPU solution? It's all a bit complicated, isn't it? But have no fear: we've handcuffed ourselves to the test-bench and won't move until we've tried the top 20 graphics setups around today.

Both Nvidia and AMD have released their most expensive and powerful graphics cards ever in the last few months. With the launch of the GTX 590 (Nvidia) and Radeon HD 6990 (AMD), the top of the market has never looked so good. But how do you get the most out of such outrageously priced components?

You want to make sure that, if you spend the best part of £600 on a graphics card, you're wringing as much potential as you can out of it. The one thing a top graphics card such as the dual-GPU GTX 590 or HD 6990 wants is a high-end display setup. A good, high-resolution desktop is going to push your expensive silicon to up its game, and will make sure you get the most out of its pixel-pushing prowess.

SLI vs. CrossFire, Part 1 – mid-range multi-GPU scaling & value ...

After nearly a month of solid benchmarking – literally hundreds of individual benchmark runs which we have gathered, analyzed and charted for you – we now have some more solid evidence about multi-GPU scaling and how pairing mid-priced middle-performing solutions compare to the expensive fastest individual cards. We are again looking at Performance Meets Value. Keep these prices in mind as you look over our results to determine value for yourself.