Introduction

Gigabyte has been in PC peripherals now since April 1986. Since that time, they have launched countless motherboards, server and workstation units, networking products and just recently, branched out into the 3D video card sector.

Gigabyte started its video cards in the early GeForce3 stages, designing their 3D cards around the original GeForce3 video card. Gigabyte soon withdrew from the 3D section until the release some time later of their Radeon 8000 and 8500 series cards. These cards took off with quite a bit of success in performance, overclocking and price. Being cheaper than nVidia based GeForce3 video cards and with performance equalling the Ti200 GF3, ATI and Gigabyte were in with a success.

Now that ATI has taken the lead away from nVidia in the 3D performance section with the new 9xxx series GPU and VPU's, Gigabyte has stuck to the ATI line. We recently took a close look at the 9700 Pro, Gigabyte's top dog in their 3D line-up, and the Radeon 9000 Pro, the ultimate in budget 3D. Today we are looking at the Middle of the 3D pack, the Radeon 9500 based Maya 2 card from Gigabyte.