As the topic says, i am looking for the BEST graphics card for under £100 (for my christmas). Needs to be for a PCI express slot.

currently running an onboard nvidia 6150LE and i want something that can play 1 year old games comfortably at 1280by1024.

Cheers for the help.

i'm using a 6600gt and 7600gs there both great not much between them performance wise, just don't buy a 6200/7300 series card

I have decided on a **Deep breath*** Gainward GeForce 7900GS 256MB PCIE DDR3 Dual DVI HDTV SLI (copied and pasted). A little over the budget but i have had a few recomendations.

I've just gone for a Sapphire X1950 pro for £124 delivered, It's slightly better performance than the 7900GS looking at the benchmarks. It was a close call between the two but I had to go for the one that performs better, didn't I?!

How about - XFX 7900GS 450M core 256MB Dual DVI TVO PCI-E - Only £104 and same spec and GDRR3 memory too and XFX a trusted brand! Free delivery too.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/121108

if you want ATi get an x850pe or x850xt. the x1800s and x1900s and x1950s are also good but often cost more, they use DirectX9.0c unlike the x800s and x850s. that isnt a big deal yet, but it will be.

if you want Geforce go for the 6800GT, 6800ultra or the ultra extreme if you can find one. all the 7800-7900-7950-8800 models are good but apart from the 7800s you'll struggle to get one for £100. all these use DirectX9.0c. nothing inbetween the 6800 and 7800 is worth looking at.

dont assume you can rate a card by its model name or number, for example an nvidia 6800 is far better than a 7600. an ati x800 is far better than a x1300.

personally i think these days you want at least a 256bit memory interface and 16 pixels per clock. anything less and you'll end up replacing it in the near future.

i got a new GeForce 7800 GS for £35 on ebay so you can get a good card for little money, it just requires patience and a very long watched items list.

mountainmachine said:

How about - XFX 7900GS 450M core 256MB Dual DVI TVO PCI-E - Only £104 and same spec and GDRR3 memory too and XFX a trusted brand! Free delivery too.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/121108

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@Jug you not think thats a really good deal for £104? I personally would wait until after chrimbo, a directx 10 is just out in the 8 series cards but they're still £300++++ so could be alot of folks selling as soon as they get vista which officially supports directx10

There are no graphics cards that are any good under £100.

You get what you pay for in this life.

mountainmachine said:

@Jug you not think thats a really good deal for £104? I personally would wait until after chrimbo, a directx 10 is just out in the 8 series cards but they're still £300++++ so could be alot of folks selling as soon as they get vista which officially supports directx10

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its not a bad deal at all, i've used ebuyer for years, they get some great deals.

i agree buying anything now is a bit daft, better to wait till after xmas and then take advantage of the january sales and the flood of second hand stuff on ebay.

you're right the directx10 generation are coming, and as usual you will see all the "money is no object" gang buying them up straight away, hopefully that means i can get a top spec 9.0c card for less cash. i've got my fingers crossed for a cheap x1900xt/xtx or x1950xtx but i think it will be some time before the directx9.0c generation will lose much value because the vast majority of users wont move to directx10 until at least xmas07. once vista is common things will be very different, but i dont see vista taking the world by storm straight away due to its hardware requirements.

I was using Vista on an old 2.6 AMD machine here I use just for surfing the net, with a simple graphics card, the hardware is really obsolete on this machine, it's not 64bit and still using serial ATA but Vista ran perfectly on it.

But I agree, once software manufacturers amend their software to cope with Vista's advanced system things will be a bit hit and miss.