We all know DX10 and DX10 supported video cards have been out for a while now, but only few of them are good enough to actually playing DX10 content. Most people still argue that DX10 is a waste of time, saying that it offers only a slight quality improvement (if at all any), but for that slight performance improvement, it takes away half of your frames per second. Suffice to say only the best cards from either of the two high-end VGA manufactures: nVidia and ATI, are capable of handling (not taming) DX10 based games.

But…only a few of us can afford them. Those video cards go way past USD350 range, and that is not all; you need a heavy duty power supply unit, very good cooling inside your case and good luck paying that electricity bill!

As with every video card family, we get a “refresh” product line towards the end of a family. Remember we got the 7900 series for the Geforce 7 series and Radeon X1900 series for the X1000 series? Likewise, we have now got the refresh lineup from nVidia and ATI for the Geforce 8 and Radeon HD2000 series. (However, as crazy as it may sound, ATI have named it HD3000)

So, the new kids are,

• Geforce 8800GT (256MB/512MB/1GB)
• Geforce 8800GTS G92 (512MB)
• Geforce 8800GS (Aimed at OEM market, and still not available in retail)
• Radeon HD3850
• Radeon HD3870 (A higher clocked HD3850)

* Click on the above links to see a review of each card.

The Geforce cards are faster and go on sale for around USD250-300 and the Radeon cards go on sale for around USD200-230.