If the entry-level and mainstream video cards cover us to the $200 price mark, then the high-end market takes us home. Here there is really no price limit, and as long as it's a desktop 3D gaming card, then we'll do our best to fit it in. This segment really starts off with the Radeon X800/X850 and GeForce 7600/7900-based cards, before finishing with the top-end Radeon X1900/X1950 XTX 512MB and GeForce GTX 512MB and GeForce 7950 GX2 1GB cards, some of which can have price tags of $500 or more.
The high-end section of the video card market is usually more of a "wild west" type of environment, where the pricing shoot-outs are always taking place between ATI and NVIDIA video cards, and new hotrod cards are continually joining the party. October didn't see a lot of new high-end models entering the chart, but there was a great deal of pricing activity, especially among high performance NVIDIA cards. The top buys for October include the attractively-priced GeForce 7950 GT 512MB, Radeon X1900 XT 256MB and All-in-Wonder Radeon X1900 256MB cards, as well as the GeForce 7950 GX2 1GB models right at the top of the performance chart.