What's the best video cards for the PC?

I was wondering what the newest video cards on the market are. I'm trying to look into what the best card is for the latest PC games, and i haven't a clue to what i should be looking for.





I currently have a ATI PRO card i bought for 400$ a few years ago, and it has became extremal outdated, (the local stores don't even carry it anymore)





I'm looking for a '1st class top of the line' graphics card, but i have no idea what I'm doing.





What cards do you have, and what card would be the highest quality?

What's the best video cards for the PC?
First you have to make sure you can use the video card. AGP is an older standard and hard to find. Best AGP card you are likely to get is an ATI 2600 or Nvidia 7800. If you have PCI Express then you can use all the modern video cards.





The Nvidia 8800 Ultra (or GTX) are the current speed leaders. They have awesome power and huge price tags. However they make a lot of heat, a lot of noise, and need a hefty power supply.





The Nvidia 8800GT and ATI 3870 are 'friendlier' cards. They have some excellent gaming power but make less noise and use less power (so less likely to fry your power supply and overheat your machine)





The ATI 3850 is a very powerful midrange card which is nice because it is quieter than the other gaming cards, uses less power (but still want a decent PSU) and only takes up one slot space.





The Nvidia 8600gts is about the same price as ATI 3850 but less powerful. The 8600gt has less power still. Really anything less than $150 is not going to be a top line card.





A couple to avoid: The 8800gts which is more expensive and less capable than the lower priced and newer 8800GT.





The ATI 2900XT which is about same speed as the ATI3870 but about $100 more expensive and a huge power sucking card that sounds like an airplane on the runway.
Reply:Well the technology has changed...and the best video cards are in pci express format now...so assuming that you have a agp slot...your pc cant use the latast cards....but they still do make some good agp cards....just check it out on google.
Reply:well there pcie now





8800 ULTRA FOR NVIDIA is the top one at the moment here in austrlia there going for about 700 to 1000 dollars dpeneding if its turbo or overlcoked , there just for ridiulous gamers , 8800gt is perfect for the mid range gamer.








HD 3870 is the top ati card currently , but nvidia is much faster nvidia has 56 transistors to ati 12 , so its a nuge difference the hd 3870 creams the 8800 in mhz and stream processors but, no transistors which si very important to
Reply:id stick with ati if i was you, overall beats geforce hands down,im crossfire 512s, q6600 go ,asus formula se, 4g corsiar,2x 150raptors,my copycat buddy has the exact same system but went with sli geforce ,and i play crysis maxed right out and no lag whatso ever to speak of,not 2 many of the people reading this can say that about their systems,anyway dont take my word for it go to some websites like hardocp.com and reveiw it yourself,but its up to you ,hope this helps you out.,,,cho
Reply:current top nvidia card : 8800 ultra


current top ati card : 3870