War of the big guns - Graphics Card Comparison

Games are enjoyed best when you have super smooth frame rates with each special effect maxed out and all visual elements enabled. On firing up a game, you probably can’t wait to select the ‘Ultra’ preset, crank up the AA and AF, enable PhysX, apply the changes and be overwhelmed by the smoothness. High-end graphics cards will happily chug on, no matter what you throw at them. However, they stand their ground unshaken only until the next generation of graphics processors are out - which might be a year from now. That doesn’t mean the next-generation games will bring them to their knees though; just that the newer graphics cards will handle it all with greater ease, especially at resolutions higher than 1920 x 1080 and on multi-display setups. For instance, the Nvidia GTX 580 and AMD Radeon HD 6900 series are great, but the best single- GPU cards you can buy are those based on the GTX 680 and HD 7970. In this round-up, we've tested 17 high-end graphics cards with an aim to show you how the GTX 670, GTX 680, HD 7870, HD 7950 and HD 7970 compare against each other. We also included the older GTX 570, GTX 580 and HD 6970 for you to see how much punch the latest GPUs pack. 

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