We decided to find out if the HD 7850 in 1GB dress can compete with the pricier, bigger and badder Pitcairn Pro cards toting 2GB.

Can you really get good gaming frame rates for under £100? In the case of the MSI HD 7770, the answer is an affirmative yes.

Military-grade graphics cards. It's what your granddad fought for…

A solid mid-range GPU that offers good performance in SLI

Harder, better, faster, stronger. Has the GTX 580 just graduated?

So really there's no compelling reason to pick this card up over a standard HD 6950. It's around £50 more expensive, and you'll still be able to hit the same overclock, admittedly with a little more heat, as this Twin FrozR II version.

As with every generation of cards, the flagship sets sail before the hanky-waving crowds, and the slimmed down versions with slightly less capable GPUs follow in their wake. The GTX 470 came hot on the heels of the GTX 480, and with only marginally reduced architecture.

Cheap but very, very cheerful

A DX11 graphics card for gamers on a budget

Unified shaders on a shoestring? You can bet your bump maps on it. Priced at a mere £145, MSI's NX8600GTS - built around Nvidia's G84 core - is the first properly midrange-priced DX10-compatible card on the shelves

With a modest 60MHz of overclock going on, the MSI OC model is also the cheapest among many of its rivals, and that’s a good thing.