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Ditch your 3D glasses. Diamond's Monster Fusion PCI, which earns a Best Buy for excellent 3D performance, and Guillemot's Maxi Gamer Phoenix, in second place, do a wonderful job at 3D tasks. In the AGP zone, Matrox's fast, reasonably priced Millennium G200 stays on top. AGP newcomers include Canopus's pricey Spectra 2500 and Number Nine's Revolution IV. Both perform well in graphics-intensive applications and 3D games.
PCI Board
Note: The following article is the original review for a machine currently appearing in PC World's Top 100. Price and some other information may no longer be current and may not match this month's chart specifications.
4. STB Velocity 128
A hefty software bundle and modest $129 price make the STB Velocity 128 a good upgrade option, even though it turns in only average performance.
The Velocity 128's track record on every one of our mixed-media business tests was middle of the pack. In our 3D game tests, however, it was a little faster than most PCI cards, except in Quake II. Because STB had not released a Quake II driver by the time we did our testing, the game couldn't take advantage of the board's hardware acceleration. No surprise, then, that all our judges rated the Velocity 128 poor in Quake. In our other test games, image quality was...