Gigabyte Radeon 9200SE

If you only play games occasionally, there's little point in splashing out a few hundred pounds for the latest graphics card when there are plenty of budget options that will do the job.

At just under £50, the 64Mb Gigabyte Radeon 9200SE proves this point admirably. Our tests had this card running at 32 frames per second at a resolution of 1024 x 768. This is a smooth rate and, as a comparison, TV programmes are only 25 frames per second. A little more performance can be squeezed out of the card if you drop the resolution of games.

The card is DirectX 9 compatible. As most new games require DirectX 9 to run, having the compatibility ensures that you won't hit any problems.

The card itself has a single VGA port for connecting to a monitor and an S-Video port, which can be used to plug your PC into a television. Gigabyte also bundles a copy of PowerDVD 5 for playing DVD movies.

This may not be the fastest card on the planet but for the price it does well. If you need to upgrade your graphics and only play the occasional game then this is £50 well spent.

Contact: Gigabyte Technology
www.giga-byte.com