Currently there are a number of high performance graphics cards available in the $300 US price bracket from both ATi and NVIDIA. The newest of which is the GeForce 7900GT from NVIDIA and as we discovered a little over a month ago now, it offers exceptional value for money. The GeForce 7900 series is also a current generation product line, meaning for roughly $300 US the 7900GT features all the latest NVIDIA technologies. Representing ATi in the $300 US price bracket would be the Radeon X1800XT and X1800XL. The X1800XL is no longer a worthwhile option as it costs roughly the same as the X1800XT, yet comes clocked significantly lower.

The Radeon X1800XL utilizes a core clock of 500MHz and a memory clock of 1GHz featuring 16 pixel shaders and 8 vertex shaders. The X1800XT on the other hand features the same amount of pixel shaders and vertex shaders with a 125MHz higher core clock and 500MHz higher memory frequency. When configured with 256MB of onboard GDDR3 memory there is virtually no price difference between the two cards, yet the X1800XT is significantly faster. The X1800XT has obviously been priced more aggressively to compete with the new GeForce 7900GT and in doing so has wiped out the X1800XL, as there is no longer a market for this product. The X1800GTO has been released to pick up the slack.

Despite the competitive pricing of the Radeon X1800XT the GeForce 7900GT looks to be just as impressive, on paper anyway. Both the X1800XT and 7900GT feature a total of 16 ROPs and 8 vertex shaders. However, where the X1800XT features 16 pixel shaders the newer 7900GT utilizes 24 pixel shaders. On the other hand the core is clocked significantly lower at 450MHz and the memory at 1.32GHz. Although I would back the 7900GT to deliver the higher frame rates, the numbers could go either way. So who should get your $300 US? Read on to find out...