PCI, then AGP, now back to PCI... Well kinda. The newest generation of video cards are PCI Express (PCI-E). Yea, I know just as you "thought" your PC was catching up with technology... BOOM. Another product is released promising insane graphics. Soon, you will be buying 2 video cards to keep up.

Right now, the new product on the block is PCI-E. Now before you hurry out and buy a PCI-E videocard you'll need an entirely new motherboard that supports PCI-E. There are many to choose from and they vary in pricing from about ~$100.00 to the high end ~$250.00. So you can imagine how much this upgrade is going to cost; a new PCI-E supporting motherboard, and new PCI-E videocard… Talk about wreaking havoc on your wallet. At the same time, if you are truly the insane gamer you pretend to be, then you need these upgrades to keep up with the true “Dawg Pound”.

I recently purchased a widescreen monitor to help my manage my multitasking side-by-side windows, and needed a video card to run this 24 inch beast. The nice folks over at Gigabyte sent me a Radeon X800XL GV-RX80L256V to review. One special feature of this card is silence. The GV-RX80L256V sports a passive cooling heat-pipe. Gigabyte is one of the leading manufacturers produces a plethora of video cards, and they stand by their products, promising quality, innovation, service and design.