On the AGP side of things, the Radeon 3850 AGP has arrived as the undisputed crowned-ruler of the aging bus, although it seems easier to source in Europe than in North America. Whether or not it’s worth the price of admission depends on your AGP system, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend pairing it with anything less than an Athlon64 or Core 2 Duo. Perhaps it might be worth pairing with a +3.0 GHz Pentium 4, but I’m not sure that would be a wise investment.

The Best Gaming Graphics Cards for Your Money:

A few simple guidelines to keep in mind when reading this list include:

- This list is for gamers who want to get the most for their money. If you don’t play games the cards in this list are more expensive than you need;
- Prices and availability change on a daily basis. We can’t offer up-to-the-minute accurate pricing info, but we can list some good cards that you probably won’t regret buying between the price-ranges we suggest;
- The list is based on some of the best U.K. prices from online retailers. In other countries or retail chains, shipping will almost certainly apply and vary;
- These are new card prices. No used or open box cards are in the list; they might be a good deal, but it’s out of the scope of what we’re trying to do.

PCI-EXPRESS INTERFACE

Best PCI-E card for under £50 (inc VAT): GeForce 8600 GT DDR2

Codename: G84 Process: 80nm Universal Shaders: 32 Texture Units: 16 ROPs: 8 Memory Bus: 128-bit Core Speed MHz: 675 Memory Speed MHz: 400 (8000 effective) DirectX / Shader Model DX 10 / SM 4.0

First off- It appears that the DDR2 slows this card down a bit when compared to its DDR3 brethren. That aside it looks to be the best sub-£50 card available in the UK right now. However, if you can afford the extra £17 or so for the 8600 GTS, we heartily recommend it.