Introduction

While there has been much breakthrough in the high end video sector we tend to forget about the value sector, after all many of us (even me) cannot afford a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra or 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro video card.

Most of us are looking for the best bang for our buck, and you will find some pretty reliable video cards on the market for this purpose. nVidia was the first company to seriously bring 3D gaming to the value video card market with the GeForce2 MX line, and continued with the GeForce4 MX video cards. These were amongst the best cards available for a great price. ATI, not to be outdone, since its success with the R300 core, wanted to take advantage of the value users out there.

Radeon 9000 broke the backs of all the 3D value chipsets with its stellar performance for a very small price. This was a kick in the guts for nVidia with its GeForce4 MX and SiS with the Xabre 400, and then we saw the ATI Radeon 9000 adopted as the weapon of choice when on the cheap.

ATI requiring something more out of its value segment has again put a new spanner in the 3D works with a new release, the Radeon 9200 core. Our first look comes from one of ATI's now biggest supporters, Gigabyte. Today we have the Gigabyte GV9200 graphics card which is about to be put through some brutal punishment, does it stand up to the test? Let's take a look and find out.