This time, we'll be concentrating on the end-user experience with new midrange and low-end video accelerators. We'll be looking at the highest end midrange cards - the Radeon 2600 XT Compare Prices on Radeon 2600 XT Video Cards and Geforce 8600 GTS Compare Prices on GeForce 8600 GTS Video Cards - to see how they compare to the lowest end discrete cards in the same families: the Radeon 2400 PRO and Geforce 8400 GS.
In our last review, the GeForce drivers were not yet able to accelerate video decoding in Windows XP, limiting their effectiveness to the new Windows Vista. Have the drivers matured to offer identical performance across these operating systems? Does one company offer a clearly superior solution? Will the products from within the same graphics card family perform closely, or will there be marked differences? Let's find out!
Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.
