Manufacturer: NVIDIA Web Site
Pricing: $399 (appx.)
Availability: Now

While the spotlight might be on AMD's latest challenge to Intel on the processor front, the recent competition between the industry's two leading 3D graphics cards makers, ATI and NVIDIA, has been every bit as fierce. ATI's RADEON 8500, which we recently previewed but then saw little else about, seemed to finally tip the performance battle in their favor. But that seeming victory proved to be short-lived when NVIDIA was able to match the new RADEON's performance with nothing more than a driver update.

With their latest top-of-the-line update to the GeForce3 line, the GeForce3 Ti 500, NVIDIA seems to be driving nails into the coffin. The performance this card provides, coupled with their Detonator XP series of drivers, is easily faster than anything we've seen to date. And given that it provides this great performance, along with the same great quality we've come to expect from the GeForce3 line, at the same price we were paying for legacy GeForce3's, ATI has plenty to be worried about, as evidenced by their bumping up the specs that the RADEON 8500 is due to be clocked at.

To put it in overly simple terms, the GeForce3 Ti 500 is basically a GeForce3 on steroids. Their building and improving upon an existing architecture would, in earlier product lines, have earned the card an "Ultra" status. But times change, I suppose, and so do names; and so we're left with what are being called Titanium GPUs, with the Ti 500 sitting at the top of the heap.