Introduction

If I had to name my favorite piece of computing hardware, it's graphics cards. And with the popularity of our articles and reviews focusing on graphics cards, it's pretty safe to say you love them, too. What makes them so interesting is the fact that they tend to be the best single component to give a boost in performance where you need it.

For so many people it doesn't matter so much what memory they get. And just going off word of mouth they can decide on the CPU, while the motherboard always tends to be something people are comfortable with. If you're looking for an i7 motherboard and you love GIGABYTE, you will probably end up with a EX58-UD5 or Extreme. If it's ASUS you love, the P6T or something from the RoG line-up would be a likely choice. If you love googling how to get the best performance and want more settings then you know what to do with, your heart will probably be stuck on something like a DFI offering.

The graphics card on the other hand is a bit hard and requires a bit more thought go into it. While you might know the brand you want and roughly how much you want to spend, the particular model you buy might be difficult to decide on. We tend to cover everything from the painfully slow $30 cards to the blistering fast $600+ ones.

But today we bust open the piggy bank, max out the credit cards and hit the daily limit on the savings account; we take the time to examine the fastest graphics card setups available to us today.

We look at three setups, which ones? - Well, you've probably figured that out already, but let's jump forward to the test setup and our first benchmark to find out.