Ladies and gentlemen of the gaming community, it is a certainty that DirectX 9 is here to stay. The new released video games all seem to be heading towards sharper more life-like graphics. This is great news to most of us, but I know there are still a few of you out there clinging to that old GeForce III card. You probably have a sign on your rig that reads, “You can take my old NVidia from me when you pry it from my cold dead system!” Now, while I admire your loyalty to a product that has treated you faithfully, I'm still going to have to shake you back into reality. Halo, Halflife2, Doom3… these are the games of the future, and they all look fantastic thanks to the new DirectX 9 effects. So what does this mean for those of you using older cards? It means that unless you think 15 stuttering frames per second is the cutting edge then it is definitely time to upgrade.

Before we look at your choices, I have to ask myself why you have waited so long for an upgrade. It could be that you are still clinging to the first penny you ever made like it was a 10 carat diamond, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and guess that you are simply suffering from temporary budget restraints which translate into, “you're broke like most of us”. So what you need is a good performing video card (at a reasonable price) that can serve your current needs and keep up with the newest, sharpest games being released. Well, the generous folks at Chaintech have sent us a card to review that just might be exactly what you need. The card is their new FX 5700 Ultra Apogee AA5700U (w/TV-Out and DVI) and it looks very promising indeed. So we shall run it thru a whole plethora of benchmarks for you and see if this could be the type of upgrade that will keep you prepared for this new onslaught of high tech games.