Some Notes About Our Recommendations

• This list is for gamers who want to get the most for their money. If you don't play games, then the cards on this list are more expensive than what you really need. We've added a reference page at the end of the column covering integrated graphics processors, which is likely more apropos.
• The criteria to get on this list are strictly price/performance. We acknowledge that recommendations for multiple video cards, such as two Radeon cards in CrossFire mode or two GeForce cards in SLI, typically require a motherboard that supports CrossFire or SLI and a chassis with more space to install multiple graphics cards. They also require a beefier power supply compared to what a single card needs, and will almost certainly produce more heat than a single card. Keep these factors in mind when making your purchasing decision. In most cases, if we have recommended a multiple-card solution, we try to recommend a single-card honorable mention at a comparable price point for those who find multi-card setups undesirable.
• Prices and availability change on a daily basis. We can't base our decisions on always-changing pricing information, but we can list some good cards that you probably won't regret buying at the price ranges we suggest, along with real-time prices from our PriceGrabber engine, for your reference.
• The list is based on some of the best U.S. prices from online retailers. In other countries or at retail stores, your mileage will most certainly vary.
• These are new card prices. No used or open-box cards are in the list; they might represent a good deal, but it's outside the scope of what we're trying to do.

Best PCIe Card: Under $85

Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For ~$50:

Radeon HD 4650 (Check Prices)

Great 1280x1024 performance in most games, 1680x1050 with lowered detail

You will not find a card that packs more punch than ATI's Radeon HD 4650 under the alluring $50 price point. With solid stock performance and an overclockable GPU, this card is an excellent starting point for our recommendations, and a wholly worthwhile upgrade if you're currently stuck using a motherboard with integrated graphics.

Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For ~$65: Tie

Radeon HD 4670 (Check Prices)

Good 1680x1050 performance in most games

With the release of Nvidia's GeForce GT 240, ATI's Radeon HD 4670 is no longer the most powerful reference card without a dedicated power connector. However, it remains a compelling solution under the $75 price point, which Nvidia's solution simply hasn't hit yet.

Performance is excellent and power usage is very low, making this product an impressive performer all-around. Its accelerated clock rates and modestly-higher price tag are worth considering if you originally had your eye on the Radeon HD 4650.

GeForce 9600 GSO (Check Prices)

Good 1680x1050 performance in most games

The GeForce 9600 GSO is seems to be getting quite hard to find, and is likely being end-of-life'd soon in favor of the new GeForce GT 240. Nevertheless, as long as it is available, the GeForce 9600 GSO remains a powerful competitor compared to the Radeon HD 4670. While the GeForce requires a dedicated PCIe power connector to supply more juice than the Radeon, it does offer better performance in some situations.

Best PCIe Card For ~$85:

GeForce 9600 GT (Check Prices)

Good 1680x1050 performance in most games

The GeForce 9600 GT is a great performer, thanks in part to its high-end 256-bit memory interface and speedy DDR3 memory. It's a great choice on an $85 budget, even if the architecture on which it centers is showing its age.

Certainly, this card's continued presence here is a testament to Nvidia's engineering work dating back almost two years ago. With that said, we'd certainly like to see the company's latest DirectX 10.1 cards drop in price to compete against ATI's strong offerings.

Best PCIe Card: ~$90 To $140

Best PCIe Card For ~$95: Tie

GeForce 9800 GT (Check Prices)

Exceptional 1680x1050 performance in most games, 1920x1200 in most games with lowered detail

The GeForce 9800 GT is essentially a rebadged GeForce 8800 GT, and offers the same great performance it has for years now (that sure sounds funny to say in reference to graphics cards).

With the rising price of ATI's Radeon HD 4850 giving it space to breathe, this legendary card is once again a recommended buy. But once again, we're looking forward to seeing technological progress put new, faster, and cooler products loaded down with more features in this space rather than revisiting history.

Fortunately, there's still PhysX and 3D Vision support to like about this aging board.

Radeon HD 4830 512MB (Check Prices)

Exceptional 1680x1050 performance in most games, 1920x1200 in most games with lowered detail

Just as the GeForce 9800 GT can once again be recommended due to the rising price of the Radeon HD 4850, so can the Radeon HD 4830. While availability is low, this Radeon is still a viable option under the $100 price point if you can find it. You'll discovered that it offers great performance on par with the GeForce 9800 GT, with the added benefit of DirectX 10.1 support.

Best PCIe Card For ~$110:

GeForce GTS 250 512MB (Check Prices)

Good 1920x1200 performance in most games

The dissapearance of the $100 Radeon HD 4850 has not only opened up the GeForce 9800 GT and Radeon HD 4830 for recommended status, but also the GeForce GTS 250.

At $110, the 512MB version of this card offers respectable performance, and nothing else in the price range can compare to it. As fast as the Radeon HD 4850 and new Radeon HD 5750 (and notably cheaper), the GeForce GTS 250 has no real competition from the rest of the sub-$150 market at this time.

Bear in mind that going this route instead of the Radeon HD 5750 will cost you DirectX 11 support and Eyefinity. But in the context of gaming, you'll need to make other quality sacrifices long before trying to enjoy either value-add in the $110 range.

Best PCIe Card For ~$120:

GeForce GTS 250 1GB (Check Prices)

Good 1920x1200 performance in most games

For $10 more than the 512MB version, an interested gamer can get the benefit of a full gigabyte of memory. At the highest resolutions and levels of anti-aliasing, this extra memory might provide a performance boost, though it's unlikely the GeForce GTS 250 is powerful enough to run at those detail levels. Still, many buyers might find the slight $10 price increase worthwhile in something like Grand Theft Auto IV.

Best PCIe Card: ~$150 To $290

Best PCIe Card For ~$155: Tie

Radeon HD 5770 (Check Prices)

Great 1920x1200 performance in most games

While the new Radeon HD 5770 isn't any faster than its older Radeon HD 4870 cousin (we've found that it's even slightly slower in many instances), it does have something the Radeon HD 4870 doesn't have: full DirectX 11 and Eyefinity support. Indeed, while the Radeon HD 5770 doesn't run away with any performance crowns in this category, it does look good from a longevity/value standpoint.

Read our full review of ATI's Radeon HD 5770 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

GeForce GTX 260 (Check Prices)

Great 1920x1200 performance in most games

Like many cards, the GeForce GTX 260 is becoming very hard to find, and may soon be end-of-life'd. In any case, it does offer advantages in titles that run better on Nvidia's GT200 architecture, and it sports some GeForce-only value-added features like PhysX compatibility and support for GeForce 3D Vision.

Once again, a little diligence is required on the part of the buyer to find out which card is best adapted for his or her favorite titles, and whether or not your motherboard supports SLI, CrossFire, or both multi-card technologies.

Best PCIe Card For ~$200:

Radeon HD 4890 (Check Prices)

Excellent 1920x1200 performance in most games

The Radeon HD 4890 is essentially an overclocked Radeon HD 4870. However, the tweaks that AMD made to the newer RV790 die result in much higher overclocking headroom. At stock speeds, this card is worth the $200. But to get the most out of it, some overclocking is in order. And now that the prices on Radeon HD 5850 cards are through the roof, there's not much between this board and ATI's next-fastest solution.

Read our full review of ATI's Radeon HD 4890 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

Best PCIe Card For ~$240:

2 x GeForce GTS 250 1GB in SLI Configuration (Check Prices)

Exceptional 1920x1200 performance, 2560x1600 in most games with lowered detail

Two GeForce GTS 250 cards in SLI pack a punch and make a strong case for multi-card setups. With the Radeon HD 4850s going up in price and down in availability, these GeForce cards replace them as the weapon of choice for sub-$300 brute force power.

Best PCIe Card: ~$300 To $400

Best PCIe Card For ~$310: None

Honorable Mention: Radeon HD 5850

Exceptional 1920x1200 performance, 2560x1600 in most titles

The new Radeon HD 5850 has some definite advantages over a pair of GeForce GTX 260s in SLI or a pair of Radeon HD 5770s in CrossFire. It doesn't need a CrossFire-compatible motherboard, it uses a lot less power thanks to its 40nm manufacturing process, and it sports DirectX 11 capabilities (plus Eyefinity).

Unfortunately, scant availability forces us to relegate the Radeon HD 5850 to Honorable Mention status until it can be purchased without having to fight for it.

Read our full review of ATI's Radeon HD 5850 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

Best PCIe Card For ~$330: Tie

At approximately the same price, these options retain the same advantages of their single-card counterparts: two GeForce GTX 260s offer SLI compatibility, PhysX, and GeForce 3D Vision support, and two Radeon HD 5770s offer DirectX 11, Eyefinity, and high-def audio bitstreaming to CrossFire-compatible motherboard users. A good case can be made for either of these options, and none of them are a poor choice. Just pick your poison.

2 x GeForce GTX 260 in SLI (Check Prices)

Exceptional 1920x1200 performance, good 2560x1600 performance in most titles

Nvidia doesn't have a DirectX 11-class architecture yet, so if you're going to sink $300+ into DirectX 10 hardware, do so knowing that there are competing DirectX 11 boards available in the same price range.

A pair of Radeon HD 5770s won't offer quite the same level of performance as two GeForce GTX 260s in SLI; that's the trade-off for more modern functionality, though.

2 x Radeon HD 5770 in CrossFire (Check Prices)

Exceptional 1920x1200 performance, good 2560x1600 performance in most titles

The new Radeon HD 5770 sports added benefits over its GeForce GTX 260 competition: DirectX 11, triple display outputs, and the ability to bitstream high-definition audio content from Blu-ray movies contribute significant value to ATI's newest mainstream graphics cards. For those seeking long-term DirectX 11 compatibility, this might be the more attractive option.

Read our full review of ATI's Radeon HD 5770 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

Best PCIe Card For ~$400:

Two Radeon HD 4890 cards in CrossFire Configuration (Check Prices)

Good 2560x1600 performance in most games

Two Radeon HD 4890 cards should, on average, perform on par or better than a single GeForce GTX 295, and will definitely beat out a single Radeon HD 5870. Plus, these Radeons cost less than either option. If you have a CrossFire-compatible motherboard and want some serious performance at high resolutions, this route is the way to go.

Read our full review of ATI's Radeon HD 4890 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

Best PCIe Card: ~$400 And Up

Best PCIe Card For ~$410: None

Honorable Mention: Radeon HD 5870

Good 2560x1600 performance in most games

For $10 less, a couple Radeon HD 4890s will easily beat a single Radeon HD 5870 in the titles that matter today (perhaps this will change when DirectX 11 software becomes more pervasive). From a raw price/performance standpoint, this makes the Radeon HD 5870 a hard sell. But that is not to say this card is underpowered: it sports the fastest single GPU on the planet, relatively low power usage (remarkably low at idle), and DirectX 11 support. For folks without a motherboard that supports CrossFire and a hefty power supply, the new Radeon HD 5870 is definitely a more-than-viable option. Unfortunately, availability is still quite rare.

Read our full review of ATI's Radeon HD 5870 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

Best PCIe Card For ~$465: None

Honorable Mention: GeForce GTX 295 (Check Prices)

Good 2560x1600 performance in most games

Despite ATI's new Radeon HD 5970 taking its place as the fastest graphics card on the planet, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295 (with SLI-on-a-board) remains an extremely powerful graphics card. Essentially two conjoined GeForce GTX 275s, the GeForce GTX 295 offers very notable gains over a single Radeon HD 5870 in the great majority of game titles, although the Radeon will use far less power doing so. The GeForce GTX 295 does have an advantage in that it it still quite easy to find and purchase. Moreover, ATI's release has forced prices on these cards down by a significant chunk.

Read our full review of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

Best PCIe Card For ~$625: None

Honorable Mention: Radeon HD 5970

Great 2560x1600 performance

3,200 shader processors. There isn't much more we need to say about the brutal grace of execution that characterizes the world's fastest graphics card, the Radeon HD 5970. With two Radeon HD 5870 GPUs onboard, the only things we can complain about are scant availability and an extremely high price tag. Availability should improve over time; the price not so much, but if you're in the market for this card price probably isn't an issue.

Read our full review of ATI's Radeon HD 5970 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

There you have it folks; the best cards for the money this month. Now all that's left to do is to find and purchase them.

Don't worry too much about which brand you choose, because all of the cards out there are close to Nvidia's and ATI's reference designs. Just pay attention to price, warranty, and the manufacturer's reputation for honoring the warranty if something goes wrong.

Also remember that the stores don't follow this list. Things will change over the course of the month and you'll probably have to adapt your buying strategy to deal with fluctuating prices. Good luck!

MaximumPC put the 5970 to the test (check out their review here), and found that it lives up to its promise. The 2GB dual-GPU card is the first to support DirectX 11, and basically doubles its wholly respectable predecessor (the 5870) in specs, capable of delivering nearly 5 teraflops of raw processing power. It's a massive card, about a foot long, designed mostly for heat dissipation, at which aim it apparently succeeds. It's also got easy access to overclocking via AMD's OverDrive, and can drive up to three displays simultaneously with a maximum resolution of 7680x1600. So it's pretty much the greatest thing ever, and it's got a pricetag to match: $600 upon its undisclosed release. Yow. [MaximumPC]

At more than a foot long, this card requires eight- and six-pin power connectors and a equally huge rig to live in. Seriously, the folks at Alienbabel Tech said they had issues fitting this card into a full size Antec 1200 chassis. Luckily, the card they had was apparently an engineering prototype, and may shrink down slightly for retail.

When we brought you word of this card in September, pricing and release date were unknown, and that hasn't changed today. Just some additional pictures for you PC gamers to drool over as you fantasize about that six 30-inch monitor setup. [Alienbabel Tech via PC Perspective via Engadget]

The architecture really is a huge leap forward, according to people who've gone through it in-depth. Interestingly, the huge focus for Fermi is GPU computing. The first actual goods coming out using Fermi should be the GT300 series cards, which, besides the 512 cores sorted into 16 streaming processors with 32 cores each, uses a brand new GDDR5 memory setup.

PC Perspective has an epic write-up breaking down Fermi in detail that's worth a whirl, and of course Nvidia's got lots of fluff themselves all about Fermi. Strangely, they don't explain the name, which sounds like a sad little poodle. [Nvidia, PC Perspective, Anandtech]

The two new cards, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850, are the first video cards in the industry to fully support DirectX 11. Beyond that tidbit, they're capable of producing 2.72 TeraFLOPS of computing power and are equipped with 1GB GDDR5 memory.

And yes, each is capable of driving six 30-inch monitors at once—what AMD refers to as "Eyefinity" technology.

Sadly, there's still no word specific on pricing or availability, but these obviously aren't bargain basement cards. [BusinessWire]

Specifics on the technology are being kept close to the vest, but a recent demonstration revealed, amazingly, that it runs on only one GPU. it also features several DisplayPort connectors—In this case, six 30-inch Dell displays were configured to run as a single 7680x4800 monitor.

Eyefinity is enabled through a combination of hardware and software being developed by AMD. On the hardware front, AMD's upcoming Radeons will sport between 3 and 6 display outputs of various types, DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, etc. And those outputs will be managed by software currently dubbed SLS, or Single Large Surface. Using the SLS tool, users are able to configure a group of monitors to work with Eyefinity and essentially act as a single, large display.

Maximum PC witnessed XPlane 9 and Far Cry 2 running at full resolution on Eyefinity at 12-20 frames per second. HotHardware notes that an upcoming DX11 racing game, Dirt 2, was played at 7680 x 3200 with "perfectly acceptable frame rates" (although 12 fps is not what many would consider "acceptable"). They also claim that there are plans to integrate CrossFire support down the line and that AMD has partnered with manufacturers to create ultra-thin bezel displays specifically designed for use with Eyefinity. How long we will have to wait and how insanely expensive all this will be has yet to be determined. [Hot Hardware and Maximum PC]

ATI's first, with the RV870-based Radeon HD 5800 series shipping out next month (no surprise, since they were showing it off a couple months ago), while Nvidia's following with the GT300 series that'll apparently hit in December, according to DigiTimes' sources. On the other hand, Nvidia seems to have the lead on the actual Windows 7 front, since their GPUs are already Windows Hardware Qualification Lab-certified with support for the new DirectCompute API. Bonus: Your existing Nvidia graphics works with it, if it ain't ancient.

Then again, there's no excuse like a new operating system for buying hundreds of dollars in new computer gear. [DigiTimes]

It actually boils down fairly simply to a mixed bag: ATI's Stream tends to be outright faster and pulls more of the load off of the CPU, but Nvidia's CUDA tends to produce better quality results. Interestingly, PC Perspective seems to like ATI's Avivo video transcoding application more than they used to, saying they're impressed by its simplicity. But which side are you on? [PC Perspective via Engadget]

The MSI R4890 Cyclone SOC, which shares as much aesthetically with a motorcycle engine as it does a PC component, is a perfect example of everything that is confusing, irritating and unnecessarily obfuscated with graphics cards today.

There's a lot of impressive tech here—an overclocked 1GHz ATI Radeon HD 4890 GPU and 1GB of GDDR5 RAM— but instead of putting that into meaningful terms, MSI is content to just throw the numbers out there and brag about the card's "200-year lifespan" and "largest ever" fan. I'm sure this is fun for the hardest of the hardcore enthusiasts, but for the rest of us it's just a headache. The card should ship any day now, priced somewhere in the ballpark of $250. [Slashgear]

Whether you're buying a new computer, building your own or upgrading an old one, the process of choosing a new graphics card can be daunting. Integrated graphics solutions—the kind that come standard with many PCs—have trouble playing games from three years ago, let alone today, and will put you at a disadvantage when future technologies like GPGPU computing, which essentially uses your graphics card as an additional processor, finally take hold. On top of all this, we're in the middle of a price dip—it's objectively a great time to buy. (Assuming you're settled on a desktop. Ahem.) The point is, you'll want to make the right choice. But how?

Set Specific Goals, Sight Unseen
Your first step to finding the right graphics card is to just step back. Just as graphics card specs are nigh-on impossible to understand, naming conventions and marketing materials will do nothing except give you a headache. The endlessly higher numerical names, the overlapping product lines, the misleadingly-named chip technologies—just leave them. For now, pretend they don't exist.

Now, choose your goals. What games do you want to play? What video output options and ports do you want? What resolution will you be playing your games at? Do you have any use for the fledgling GPGPU technologies that are slowly permeating the marketplace? And although you may have to adjust this, set a price goal. Ready-built PC buyers will have to consider whatever upgrade cost your chosen company is charging, and adjust accordingly. For people upgrading their own systems, $150-$200 has been something of a sweet spot: It'll get you a card with a new enough GPU, and sufficient VRAM to handily deal with mainstream games for a solid two years. If you want to spend less, you can; if you want to spend more, fine.

These are the terms that matter most. Seriously, disregard any allegiance to Nvidia or ATI, prior experiences with years-old graphics hardware or some heretofore distant, unreleased and unspec'd game franchise. Be decisive about what you want, but as far as hardware and marketing materials go, start blind.

Don't Get Caught Up In Specs
Now that you've laid out your ambitions, as modest or extreme as they may be, it's time to dive into the seething, disorienting pool of hardware that you'll be choosing from. The selection, as you'll find out, is daunting. The first layer of complexity comes from the big two—Nvidia and ATI—whose product lines read more like Terminator robot taxonomies than something generated by humans. Here's Nvidia's desktop product line, right now:

It seems like you ought to be able glean a linear progression of performance (or at least price) out of that alphanumeric pile, right? Not at all. How in the world are we to know that the 9800GTX is generally more powerful than the GTS 250, or that the 8800GTS trumps a 9600GT? A two letter suffix can mean more than a model number, and likewise, a model number can mean more than membership in a product line. These naming conventions change every couple years, and occasionally even get traded between companies. For example, I've personally owned two graphics cards that bore 9x00 names—you just won't see them on the chart above, because they were made by ATI. Point is: You don't need to bother with this nonsense.

The next layer of awfulness comes from the sundry OEMs that rebrand, tweak and come up with elaborate ways to cool offerings from the big two. This is what Sapphire, EVGA, HIS, Sparkle, Zotac and any number of other inanely named companies do. They can, on occasion, cause some sizable changes to the performance of the GPUs they're built around, but by and large, the Nvidia or ATI label on the box is still the best indication of what to expect from the product, i.e., a Zotax Gtx285 won't be that much better or worse than an eVGA or stock model. You'll get a different fan/heatsink configuration, different hardware styling, and possibly different memory or GPU frequency specs, but the most important difference—and the only one you should really concern yourself with—is price.

Graphics cards' last, least penetrable line of defense against your comprehension is hardware jargon. Bizarre, unhelpful spec sheets are, and always have been, a common feature in PC hardware, from RAM (DDR3-1600!) to processors (12 MB L2 cache! 1333MHz FSB!).

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Graphics cards are worse. Each one has three MHz-measured speeds you'll see advertised—the core clock, the CPU (shader) clock and the memory frequency. VRAM—the amount of dedicated memory your card has to work with—is another touted specification, ranging from 256MB to well beyond the 1GB barrier for gaming cards. On top of frequency, memory introduces a whole slew of additional confusing numbers: memory type (as in, DDR2 or DDR3); interface width (in bits, the higher the better); and memory bandwidth, nowadays measured in GB/s. And increasingly, you'll see processor core numbers trotted out. Did you know that Nvidia's top-line card has 480 of them? No? Good.

The best way to approach these numbers is to ignore them. Sure, they provide comparative evaluation and yes, they do actually mean something, but unless you're a bonafide graphics card enthusiast, you won't be able to look at a single spec—or a whole spec sheet—and come to any useful conclusions about the cards. Think of it like cars: horsepower, torque and engine displacement are all real things. They just demand context before they can be taken to mean anything to the driver. That's why road tests carry so much weight.

Graphics cards have their own road testers, and they've got the only numbers you need to worry about.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Respect the Bench, or Trust the Experts
In the absence of meaningful specs, names or distinguishing features, we're left with benchmarks. This is a good thing! For years, sites like Tom's Hardware, Maximum PC, and Anandtech have tirelessly run nearly every new piece of graphics hardware through a battery of tests, providing the buying public with comparative measures of real-word performance. These are the only numbers you need to bother yourself with, and where those goals you settled on come into play.

Here's how to apply them. Say you just really want to play Left 4 Dead, and have about a hundred dollars to spend. Navigate over to Tom's, check their benchmarks for that particular game, and scroll down the list. You're looking for a card that is a) an option on whatever system you're buying and b) can handle the game well—at a high resolution and high texture quality—which, generally speaking, is a comfortable 60 frames per second. Find the card, check the price and you're practically done. Once you've zeroed in on a card based on your narrow criteria, expand outward. You can check out more games benchmarks and seek out standalone reviews, which will enlighten you on other, less obvious considerations, like fan noise, power draw and reported reliability. (Note: resources for notebook users are a little more sparse. That said, Notebook Check [click the British flag for English] does good work.]

From there, your next worry will be buying for the future. You shouldn't buy the bare minimum hardware for the current generation of games—there's no need to spring for a card that'll be obsolete within a few months, no matter how cheap it is. But buying the latest, greatest dual-GPU graphics cards is an equally bad value proposition. As generations of video hardware have come and gone, one thing has remained constant: A company's midrange offerings, usually pegged at about $150-$200, are your best bet, period. Sometimes they'll be new products, and sometimes they'll have been around a while. What you'll be buying, basically, is the top end of the last generation. This is fine, and will keep the vast majority of users happy for the lifecycle of their PC. Those of you who live on the bleeding edge probably don't need this guide anyway.

Your alternative route is to just trust the experts. Sites like Ars Technica and Maximum PC regularly assemble system guides at various pricepoints, in which they've made your value judgments for you. Tom's even assembles a "Best Cards for the Money" guide each month, which is invaluable. At given price points, the answer will often be obvious, and these guys know what they're talking about.

But keep in mind, they're applying the same formula you can, just with a slightly more knowing eye. The matter truly is as simple as broadly deciding what you need, consulting the right sources and floating far enough above the spec-ravaged landscape so as to avoid getting a headache. Good luck.

The first GeForce 200M notebook cards—the GTX 280M and 260M—were for crazy gaming rigs, and were actually based on the previous-gen G92 architecture. (Nvidia did pulled some confusing re-branding jujitsu a few months back.) The new 200M cards are based on the "current high-end desktop architecture" (so, actually the G200 architecture) and round out the 200M series, replacing the current 9M series across the board: GTS 260M, GTS 250M, GT 240M, GT 230M, G 210M. Here's how the specs break down:

So to recap in English, all the Nvidia notebook graphics cards that are like "GT 9600" are going to be replaced by ones that are like "GT 240" which are faster but use less power. I don't know why Nvidia went from 9000 to 200, so don't ask me. It's actually kind of a bummer they didn't make it into the new MacBook Pros, though, since they now have officially old and busted graphics chips inside. [Nvidia]

What a Difference a Letter Makes
GPU sounds—and looks—a lot like CPU, but they're pretty different, and not just 'cause dedicated GPUs like the Radeon HD 4870 here can be massive. GPU stands for graphics processing unit, while CPU stands for central processing unit. Spelled out, you can already see the big differences between the two, but it takes some experts from Nvidia and AMD/ATI to get to the heart of what makes them so distinct.

Traditionally, a GPU does basically one thing, speed up the processing of image data that you end up seeing on your screen. As AMD Stream Computing Director Patricia Harrell told me, they're essentially chains of special purpose hardware designed to accelerate each stage of the geometry pipeline, the process of matching image data or a computer model to the pixels on your screen.

GPUs have a pretty long history—you could go all the way back to the Commodore Amiga, if you wanted to—but we're going to stick to the fairly present. That is, the last 10 years, when Nvidia's Sanford Russell says GPUs starting adding cores to distribute the workload across multiple cores. See, graphics calculations—the calculations needed to figure out what pixels to display your screen as you snipe someone's head off in Team Fortress 2—are particularly suited to being handled in parallel.

An example Nvidia's Russell gave to think about the difference between a traditional CPU and a GPU is this: If you were looking for a word in a book, and handed the task to a CPU, it would start at page 1 and read it all the way to the end, because it's a "serial" processor. It would be fast, but would take time because it has to go in order. A GPU, which is a "parallel" processor, "would tear [the book] into a thousand pieces" and read it all at the same time. Even if each individual word is read more slowly, the book may be read in its entirety quicker, because words are read simultaneously.

All those cores in a GPU—800 stream processors in ATI's Radeon 4870—make it really good at performing the same calculation over and over on a whole bunch of data. (Hence a common GPU spec is flops, or floating point operations per second, measured in current hardware in terms of gigaflops and teraflops.) The general-purpose CPU is better at some stuff though, as AMD's Harrell said: general programming, accessing memory randomly, executing steps in order, everyday stuff. It's true, though, that CPUs are sprouting cores, looking more and more like GPUs in some respects, as retiring Intel Chairman Craig Barrett told me.

Explosions Are Cool, But Where's the General Part?
Okay, so the thing about parallel processing—using tons of cores to break stuff up and crunch it all at once—is that applications have to be programmed to take advantage of it. It's not easy, which is why Intel at this point hires more software engineers than hardware ones. So even if the hardware's there, you still need the software to get there, and it's a whole different kind of programming.

Which brings us to OpenCL (Open Computing Language) and, to a lesser extent, CUDA. They're frameworks that make it way easier to use graphics cards for kinds of computing that aren't related to making zombie guts fly in Left 4 Dead. OpenCL is the "open standard for parallel programming of heterogeneous systems" standardized by the Khronos Group—AMD, Apple, IBM, Intel, Nvidia, Samsung and a bunch of others are involved, so it's pretty much an industry-wide thing. In semi-English, it's a cross-platform standard for parallel programming across different kinds of hardware—using both CPU and GPU—that anyone can use for free. CUDA is Nvidia's own architecture for parallel programming on its graphics cards.

OpenCL is a big part of Snow Leopard. Windows 7 will use some graphics card acceleration too (though we're really looking forward to DirectX 11). So graphics card acceleration is going to be a big part of future OSes.

So Uh, What's It Going to Do for Me?
Parallel processing is pretty great for scientists. But what about those regular people? Does it make their stuff go faster. Not everything, and to start, it's not going too far from graphics, since that's still the easiest to parallelize. But converting, decoding and creating videos—stuff you're probably using now more than you did a couple years ago—will improve dramatically soon. Say bye-bye 20-minute renders. Ditto for image editing; there'll be less waiting for effects to propagate with giant images (Photoshop CS4 already uses GPU acceleration). In gaming, beyond straight-up graphical improvements, physics engines can get more complicated and realistic.

If you're just Twittering or checking email, no, GPGPU computing is not going to melt your stone-cold face. But anyone with anything cool on their computer is going to feel the melt eventually.

[Back to our Complete Guide to Snow Leopard]

Complaints run something like this: When the more powerful Geforce 9600M is switched on, the display is ravaged by green lines and other weirdness, which gets worse as the card appears to heat up. Switching to the integrated 9400M cures the problem, as does restarting (at least temporarily). Another user notes that the problems flare up doing gaming, but calms down when they're "doing lower-performance stuff" which also seems to point to a heat issue.

This is actually the third run of MacBook Pros to be allegedly affected by defective Nvidia graphics cards with heat problems: The previous generation was packed with Nvidia cards that Apple determined were suffering from its notorious material defect that caused cards to fail at a "higher-than-normal" rates. The current generation of 15-inch MacBook Pros also had video problems (the ominous "black screen of death") which Apple also acknowledged, though no definitive blame was ever placed on faulty cards. (Although the Inquirer will readily tell you the cards are in fact, defective.)

Are these graphics cards, in fact, bad? It's too soon to tell—and very possible we're just hearing from a tiny, tiny but vocal minority that's been afflicted—especially without definitive word from Apple. I'd say, as I did before, that given the not-so-distant past, it doesn't look very good for Nvidia, whatever the actual case may be. [Apple via Engadget]

The new maximum component score is a 7.9. Microsoft has (and will continue to) raise the cap as new hardware components come out. If a current component score is a 5.6 under Vista, it will continue to be around a 5.6 (give or take) unless it was subject to various tweaks and feedback changes Microsoft took when adjusting the index, such as new disk tests.

For gaming...

...scores in the 6.0 to 6.9 range to support DX10 graphics and deliver good frames rates at typical screen resolutions (like 40-50 frames per second at 1280x1024). In the range of 7.0 to 7.9, we would expect higher frame rates at even higher screen resolutions.

But still, it's a bit of a clunky way to determine how well your graphics card will perform in newer games. Ballpark, sure, but nothing specific. For that, you should use more dedicated benchmarks like 3DMark.

Expected to be unveiled at CES, the GTX 295 (nee GTX260 GX2) actually is made up of two print-circuit boards, and each one has a GTX 200 GPU, 240 stream processors, 448-bit memory bus and 896MB DDR3 memory. It's totally outrageous, in other words, and requires 289W of power, so I hope you've got a behemoth of a power supply.

The price, while unknown, will be proportionately juggernaut-sized, crushing your wallet. Since it's designed to beat ATI's Radeon HD 4870 X2, it'll likely fall in the same price range, probably around or slightly north of $500. It could swing cheaper though, since Nvidia's current high-end card, the GTX 280, is trending south of $400 at the moment. Guess we'll see, but I can't afford it either way.

Oh, and first person to ask "will it run Crysis?" is banned. I'm not kidding. [Expreview via X-bit Labs]

The Financiapocalypse can't stop Christmas, but it can sure as hell suck some of the joy out of it. At the very least, it's probably making you reconsider just how much you wanna spend on toys for yourself and others this holiday season. You're probably looking to cut corners here and there, on dollar-store Christmas lights, iPod knockoffs and the like. That's all fine and dandy, but we've made a list of things you can't afford to cheap out on, because doing so will bite you in the ass later. Still, since we like you, we're also sharing how to save a bit of money in the process, so the whole not-cheaping-out thing doesn't hurt as much.

Graphics Cards

When you're configuring a laptop online, you get a ton of options unless it's a Mac (ooooo burn). Anyway, the popular wisdom is that juicing the processor is always the best way to allocate your dollars to boost performance, since more megahertz is more betterer, right? Wrong. Take this Dell Studio configuration here. Spending $75 on the discrete ATI Mobility Radeon is a way better buy than $50 200MHz upgrade to the processor.

The performance difference those couple hundred megahertz buys you is negligible, while a discrete graphics card from ATI or Nvidia will deliver serious performance benefits over Intel's integrated graphics crap. This is especially true if you do even light 3D gaming, HD video playback or anything else mildly graphically intensive like running Vista's Aero interface (oooo another burn). Also, if you plan to keep a laptop for more than two years, buying the graphics card makes it more future-proof, since Windows 7—and many resource-intensive apps—will grab hold of graphics cards for extra computing muscle, too.

Memory

Memory (aka RAM) is another place to sock your computing dollars instead of blindly bumping up the megahertz. Adding RAM almost always gives your computer a more noticeable performance boost for the same price (especially if you're going from like 1GB to 3GB), allowing you to multitask more and run crazier programs without dragging your computer down. And really, you shouldn't even try to run Windows Vista on anything less than 2GB. (If you can get 4GB and run Vista 64-bit, that's really magical.)

There is a trick to this, however. You don't buy the extra RAM as part of the computer configuration process, since your computer maker of choice will charge you by the arse-hairs for it. Instead, if you're comfortable doing an at-home installation, buy a laptop with the lowest amount of RAM, then buy it separately from Newegg, who even has a helpful tool to pick the right RAM that won't blow up your computer. Crunch the numbers first, of course, but chances are, in big RAM jumps, you will save money.

Another memory tip for those taking the not-as-hard-as-it-sounds cost-cutting step of building their own desktop PC: DDR2 memory is significantly cheaper than DDR3 memory ($60 vs. $120), and at equivalent speeds, the performance difference isn't very noticeable. Your best bet—following our not-skimping guidelines—is to get twice as much DDR2 memory for the same price.

Camera Lenses

The secret about DSLRs that Nikon and Canon don't wanna tell you in the middle of their arms race is that what really matters is the glass—the lens. A Canon 20D—or hell, an XT—with an awesome lens will take better pictures than a 40D with a crummy lens every single time. Besides, if you really want to maximize your DSLR's potential, you're going to need to expand beyond the kit lens that came in the box. It's literally like getting new glasses after a decade of avoiding the eye doctor. Unfortunately, like glasses, camera lenses are one of those things where price really does tend to be commensurate with quality. Don't expect fire sales.

Don't go crappy, instead go used. A used or refurbished lens is always cheaper than a brand new one. Of course, you should always buy from a reputable retailer with a good warranty and return policy, in case there's something wonky with it. (That applies for new lenses too, really.) Here's a list of places to buy used Canon glass. With older lenses, there might be a few caveats like the lack of autofocus, but as Charlie at Gadget Lab notes in his account of using some more "antique" Nikon glass, the experience with those limitations can actually be rewarding, and help you learn about more photography in the process. (And isn't learning why you got a DSLR in the first place?)

If the used route frightens you, another approach is to go with a cheaper camera, and spend the extra money on quality glass. And guess what? Just because a new camera model pops out every six to nine months, it doesn't magically make the older models take less excellent pictures.

Portable GPS Navigation Devices

What? The GPS navigation in your phone isn't enough? Okay, it probably isn't if you actually get behind a wheel to go places. There are lots of GPS navigation devices, and some of them look pretty good for pretty cheap. We're gonna get real specific with our advice here: Get a Garmin Nuvi. Every. Time.

We've road-tested pretty much every navigation device out there, from the smartest cellular connected machines to the dumbest WinCE systems falling off the truck from China, and time and again, we come back to the Nuvi. That's not to say you have to spend $200 more on a navigator. Maybe you could track down last year's top models that are now on sale. The maps wouldn't have changed that much in 12 months. Regardless, even if the Garmin is $25 or $50 more than the TomTom or Magellan on the shelf next to it, get the Garmin. The product will last longer and be more simple to use, resulting in your happiness and the happiness of the people stuck in the car with you. It's worth the extra scratch.

Headphones

Like liquor, strippers and accountants, when it comes to headphones, you get what you pay for. In this dimension there's no such thing as good $2 headphones. You might tolerate them because you know don't any better (or you are simply a knowing masochist) but I guarantee you, they sound like the Tin Man's rusty ass.

You may recall that our amazing, extensive no-BS headphones battlemodo breaks down the best and the worst in every price category worth considering, and is a great place to start. The trend of the piece, you might notice, is that you can't go wrong with Shures, which don't cost as much as some audiophile earphones, but generally have list prices starting at $100. Good news, my favorites for the money, Shure's E2c sound-isolating headphones, now can be had for $60 easy, or as low as $40 on sale. Some people prefer those to their current replacement the SE110 (the E2c's are slightly bassier), that list for $100 but sell for $75 at Amazon at the moment. I know that a few editors at Gizmodo prefer the SE110s, but either way, the "hundred dollar" headphones stomp the cheap-skate models.

That's the real point: The extra $40 for a good pair of headphones delivers such a fantastical world of difference—especially to those commuters and workout buffs who spend a decent amount of time wearing them—that it is very much worth the extra cash. The only "catch" is that you will finally hear how bad your MP3s sound if you ripped them at a super-low bitrate. MP3s under 192Kbps might need to be re-ripped, since you will hear actually, at long last, hear the compression.

Your Turn

Alright, that's five from us. Surely you guys have got advice on other gear and accessories you should never skimp on. If so, though, you better be prepared to share ways to buy them cheaper than list price. Retail is for suckers! Come on, let's hear from you in the comments.

More Advice for the Black Friday Fray:
• The aforementioned Ultimate Survival Guide.
• 5 Gadgets You Can't Skimp On (And How to Save Money Buying Them)
• Best of Black Friday Deals Complete Roundup">All the best deals in one place
• Plus these late breaking ones from Cupertino: Apple Black Friday Deals Include Some Decent Third-Party Discounts
• Warnings: 7 Crappy Black Friday "Deals" That Aren't Really
• How To Choose an HDTV on Black Friday (or Any Day)
• How to set up that new HDTV you just got.

Photochop Contest:
• Brutally Honest Black Friday Ads Showcase Retailers on the Brink

Why You Might Want to Avoid Shopping on Black Friday, altogether:
• 10 Reasons We're Doomed: Black Friday Edition
• WalMart Worker Trampled to Death by Deal-Crazed Black Friday Shoppers

[Complete Black Friday Gadget Coverage at Giz]