Graphics cards

Because people keep asking me to comment about them, here's a post to answer a few questions.

Firstly, a discrete graphics card is always preferable to anything else. Why? Because there's no performance advantage to being on the motherboard - except that the board manufacturer might be diverting system memory for it.

Either way, don't touch. The only possible justification is in the production of a really low energy system. But I'm assuming you want to play - at the least - warcraft.

Now, which is better - ATI, Nvidia, intel, your maiden aunt...

That's a different topic. You pays your money, you take your choice. However, if you look closely you will find charts like this.

It's not a perfect comparison. It doesn't tell the whole story - the effects of different shader versions, the true impact of mulitple processors, the joy of DDR5 or the like.

But it does give order of magnitude figures. So looking at texture fill rates - read, the amount it can paint on the screen - the cards you mentioned:

6500 GT - Call it the same as a 6600 LE - 1.2 billion/sec
7100 - That's 1.4 billion/sec

Might as well go for a old, creaking 6800 - at 3.9 billion it smokes the pair, put together.

And that's not even the GT version at 5.6 billion.

So my advice? If you're building a new PC and you want to play games...of any sort past solitare...spend a little money now. Call it £60 on a card you won't have to replace in three weeks.

Say, well, this. Not really a game card, but not complete junk.

Please note - that's not a recomendation. I wouldn't suggest anything less then an x600 for gaming. Anything less (ie, 9500, 8500) isn't designed for games. So start at 8600...