Introduction
Leadtek PX7800 GTX TDH MyVIVO Extreme 256MB and SAPPHIRE RADEON X1800 XT 512MBWhich graphics card to buy if your wallet is just bursting with £20 notes and you want the best PC gaming experience possible? The answer's a tough one and dependant on quite a few factors. For all-out performance you shouldn't look any further than multi-GPU solutions from NVIDIA and ATI. NVIDIA's SLI technology has been around for a while and is a proven design with immediate availability of the requisite parts, namely an SLI-certified motherboard and PCIe graphics cards that run in tandem. ATI's fledgling CrossFire is still in its infancy and, as such, master cards and compatible motherboards are slowly but surely coming to market.
The merits of multi-GPU technology are obvious enough, but certain users would rather invest in a top-of-the-range card now, run it in single-card mode, and, probably, add another in due course. It's these users that want the fastest single-card setup today. So what is it? Is it from NVIDIA or ATI? Let's find out as we put two near-£400 graphics cards to the test. In the green corner and hailing from Leadtek Research is a pre-overclocked GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB that throws the reference design out of the window. Matching up to it in the red corner and from SAPPHIRE Technologies is a retail RADEON X1800 XT 512MB. Let this 3D pugilistic fight begin.
