It's been an amazing six months since Sharky Extreme last had a winner-take-all slugfest between multiple high performance video accelerators. During that span of time much about the way we expect our video cards to perform in our PCs has changed.

The rabid lust for fast gaming speed at any cost has been replaced by a move towards balancing both visual quality and efficient speed. Gamers want the best of both worlds and are no longer as willing to overlook a very fast video card's poor graphical presentation of their favorite game.

Likewise, the feature support we expect from the new breed of video accelerators has risen to very high levels. From DVD to video capture, features are more important in the video card market than ever before.

In short, we want our video cards to do it all, and do it all very well.

Today we've rounded up the fastest video cards in the world, some not even available in the retail channel yet, and have pitted them against each other towards finding out which is the best overall card money can buy.

At first glance semiconductor designer nVidia has clearly reaped the benefits of the move by rival chip maker 3dfx to sell their cards directly to the consumer and omit possible 3rd party OEM manufacturers. The nVidia TNT2 Ultra is equipped on four of the six cards in this roundup, each a powerful example of the current state of the art in graphics design.

3dfx is not defenseless to the nVidia onslaught however, they were the first company to place their high end product, the Voodoo3-3000, in harm's way by debuting the product in the retail sector two months ago. The sales of the Voodoo3-3000 continue to be strong according to the latest market data, a testament to the successful marketing campaign led by the brand-driven company.