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We've all got at least one mobile phone each, right? The trouble is, how do you decide which is the best mobile phone for you?
Hopefully, TechRadar's extensive mobile phone reviews can help you with that. But if you're still stumped, you've come to the right place. Because here we have a constantly-updated list of the best mobile phones on the planet.
Whether you're after the best budget music phone or a high-end smartphone, the best ones are all here. And we've got in-depth reviews of all of them.
Here are our rankings for the best mobile phones in the world...
Samsung has fused elements of both the Genio Touch and the Genio QWERTY to come up with a hybrid device – the Genio Slide.
Unlike its predecessors, the Genio Slide is a 3G-enabled handset, with high-speed HSDPA mobile data support (up to 7.2Mbps) and Wi-Fi connectivity built in.
It also has A-GPS satellite-based location finding onboard.
Pitched at the youth market, the Samsung Genio Slide certainly delivers a terrific feature package for a low-cost touchscreen handset, with a roll-call of functionality you'd expect of a higher-end model.
Our quick verdict: The Samsung Genio Slide was a surprise package - cheap, well equipped and while not really competing on tech, still perfectly usable. The QWERTY keyboard is excellent and shows Samsung is serious about capturing the social networking market.
Read: Samsung Genio Slide review
| - INQ Chat 3G - | --- Samsung Genio Touch --- |
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We've seen plenty of the recent razzle dazzle in the mobile phone market revolving around tech-loaded touchscreen smartphones like the HTC Desire and their eye-catching budget feature-phone stablemates like the Sony Ericsson Vivaz.
By contrast, handsets that are marketed primarily on their eco-friendliness have, so far, been a relatively low-key sideshow. And the few choices that have been available have mostly been worthy-but-unexciting designs with modest features, like the Nokia 3110.
Sony Ericsson has taken a step towards adding a bit of eco-appeal to its range with the release of the Elm. The Sony Ericsson Elm is part of Sony Ericsson's new GreenHeart portfolio of mobile phones that major on their green credentials.
Our quick verdict: The Elm is Sony Ericsson doing what it does best - making a phone that simply does well at calling, texting and a decent enough camera too. It's not going to set the world on fire, but offers good 'eco-credentials' as well as the right hardware package at an affordable price.
Read: Sony Ericsson Elm review
| - INQ Mini 3G - | ------- Sony Ericsson W995 ------ | ----- Nokia 3110 ----- |
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Featuring an improved processor and latest UI, the Bold 9700 certainly has the specs but can it stop the iPhone and Android onslaught?
Well it's certainly a very good device, building on everything we've come to expect from the Canadian firm.
It's a little bit squished in comparison to the older device, but we don't think that's too much of an issue given the well designed chassis.
The sheer swiftness of the Bold 2 9700 is to be commended, as it's clearly a big effort from RIM to get that up to speed, and although App World isn't working for us yet thanks (probably) to T-Mobile, we're sure once that's up and running the Bold 9700 will be a very compelling business phone indeed.
Like the HD2, whether it's something the consumer will want/need, we don't know – it depends on the importance of easy to sync web mail we guess, as well as a stylish device to boot.
Our quick verdict: The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is still RIM's best device in the range, but it's starting to creak a bit as the OS is badly in need of an update. That said, it's still an excellent messaging device with the likes of a unified inbox for Tweets and Facebook messages offering a very nice experience that even the iPhone can't match.
Read: BlackBerry Bold 9700 review
| ----- BlackBerry Storm 2 ---- | ---- HTC HD2 ----- | ----- Palm Pre ---- |
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While a slew of Apple iPad rivals will try to beat Apple at its own game, blindly following its form factor into a fight for the other podium positions, Dell is taking a slightly different approach with its hotly-anticipated Streak tablet.
The sleek device, with its 5-inch multi-touch screen, boasts the processing power, functionality and the Android operating system necessary to take a run at 2010's top tablets, but also offers a good bit more than that.
Indeed, its real ace in the hole is where the lines are blurred into smartphone territory. It's the first gadget Dell has ever released in the UK to have voice calling and, along with the familiar phone-esque Android interface, text messaging, five-megapixel camera and removable battery, it appears to have a shot at muscling in on some of the main mobile players.
Our quick verdict: Out of all the phones we've reviewed this year, the Dell Streak was the only one where people actually came up to us and asked what it was. Sure, it doesn't really sit in a category very well - it's too small to be an iPad, too big to be a phone - but it just works, and when it's upgraded it could be a really smashing device. It's also remarkably pocket friendly for the size.
Read: Dell Streak review
| ----- Apple iPad 3G ---- | ---- HTC HD2 ----- | ----- HTC Desire ---- |
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The Nokia E71 certainly hit the mark for its target business audience, so it's little surprise that its E72 successor reprises much of what was good about that QWERTY keyboard-packing Symbian S60 smartphone, while updating it with extra power and performance.
The E72 features a sleek business-like design, sporting a BlackBerry-style full QWERTY keyboard across its wide body. Some eye-catching chrome trim complements the classically understated bodywork that's aimed squarely at serious business users.
Smartphone technology may have moved on rapidly since the E71 first wowed us as a business tool, but it seems there's still strong demand for devices like the E72.
Our quick verdict: Nokia hasn't had much luck in all round smartphones recently, but its E-Series 'business range' is still going strong. The E72 is easy to set up, fast at retrieving emails and allows you to do all the things you want it to with aplomb. It's not going to rival today's top end touchscreen phones, but in its own niche its among the best.
Read: Nokia E72 review
| ----- BlackBerry Bold 9700 ---- | ---- BlackBerry Pearl 3G ----- | ----- Palm Pre ---- |
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Aimed at mobile buyers after some touch control action on a budget, the LG POP GD510 is the smallest, lightest and one of the cheapest 3-inch touchscreen phones around.
After LG's success with the cash-conscious Cookie KP500 – which notched up over 10 million sales in just over a year – LG must be hoping for similar things from this stylishly slimline device, which at launch is selling for under £100 on a pay as you go package.
The LG POP GD510 doesn't try to be a do-everything smartphone. The POP is instead pitched at delivering a fun package, with a friendly user experience and the sort of features its target audience are after.
And that's why it slots in nicely here at number 15.
Our quick verdict: As we've said, this phone manages to hit the right spots for a reasonable price, and it slimline chassis is something a lot of people like. There are always naysayers who believe phones like this are pointless, but while the experience is a little slow the overall functionality for less than £100 is tip top.
Read: LG Pop GD510 review
| Samsung Tocco Lite | LG Cookie KP500 | Nokia 5530 XpressMusic |
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While the more meaty smartphones are dominating at the sharp end of the top 15, spare a thought for the excellent midrange handsets currently available.
The Nokia 6700 Classic may not be as feature-laden as the HTC Desire, but it's a brilliant candybar phone that may just surprise you.
While there are a few minor omissions in the handset, Nokia has largely included things that you actually need in a phone of this calibre (such as a decent camera and speedy internet browser), although a little more home-screen customisation would have been nice.
For the person who wants a decent phone at a reasonable price, and one that he or she can pull out without fear of it looking like the mobile equivalent of a woolly mammoth in three months time, they should seriously take a good hard look at the Nokia 6700 Classic.
Our quick verdict: The thing about the 6700 Classic is that it screams elegance - it's seriously weighty but that only adds to the premium feel. It's not too expensive, has a fast (if slightly lightweight) browser and a top notch camera - a real gem in the desert of 'and me' handsets.
Read: Nokia 6700 Classic review
| - Sony Ericsson Aino - | ------- INQ Mini 3G ------ | ----- Nokia 6303 ----- |
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Google has created hype around its own phone to rival Apple with its iPhone - and it has better specs on nearly every feature with the Nexus One. But is it enough to sway public opinion?
In an attempt to show itself as a mobile manufacturer in its own right, Google has released the Nexus One, a handset built by HTC but branded solely as a Google phone.
Despite some well-publicised problems with customer support and keypad malfunctions - neither of which became an issue during our testing process - the Nexus One is actually a stellar smartphone, easily the match of its peers.
Our quick verdict: What's really odd about the Nexus One is how the experience is inferior to its twin, the HTC Desire. The interface lags a touch, the touch sensitive buttons are harder to use and the price is £5 higher a month - we're not sure we care about noise cancellation and voice search if it costs £120 more. It's strange that the Desire manages to do so much more with an overlay on top too - we find it really hard to recommend the Nexus One instead, unless you really hate Sense UI.
Read: Google Nexus One review
| - HTC Desire - | ------- Palm Pre Plus ------ | ----- Apple iPhone 4 ----- |
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The HTC HD2's enormous 4.3-inch touchscreen is hugely impressive. And the HD2 is the first Windows Phone to come packing the HTC Sense overlay interface, as well as a capacitive multi-touch screen.
It smashes past the iPhone in terms of raw processing speed and the ability to handle Flash video.
And it dwarfs the Hero with a more responsive screen and its Wi-Fi routing ability too, and is far better than anything Samsung, LG or Nokia have come up with so far.
Our quick verdict: While it's a bit of a repetitive thing to say, we've not been impressed with Windows Mobile for years. However, the HTC HD2 does well at making it a little more relevant by packing it in with the best hardware. It's fast, the screen is massive and if you're after the benefits of the powerful WinMo OS then there aren't many other better experiences around.
Read: HTC HD2 review
HTC Touch Diamond 2 ----- | ----- HTC Hero ----- | ----- Apple iPhone 3GS ---- |
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The HTC Wildfire is one of the latest phones from the Taiwanese firm, and it's taking a slightly different tact to its bigger brothers.
It looks a lot like the HTC Desire, but it's got a better screen than the HTC Tattoo and it's packing the same processor as the HTC Hero... got all that?
The main thing to realise is that the Wildfire is a budget phone and will be priced accordingly.
Our quick verdict: We liked the HTC Tattoo for its decent Android rendition, but ultimately the hardware was flawed. The WIldfire makes up for that issue and packs the best of Android 2.1 into a very cheap little package.
Read: HTC Wildfire review
| - HTC Tattoo - | --- Sony Ericsson X10 Mini --- | ----- LG Pop ----- |
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Featuring a high end 8MP camera with 720p HD video recording, the Milestone XT720 is a phone we've seen rumoured for a very long time indeed.
It's essentially the Motorola Motoroi we showed you back in February at Mobile World Congress, but using a UK-friendly radio receiver and shedding the digital video tuner offered to the Korean market.
What's odd about the phone is that it's still packing the same hump on the right-hand side - we assumed that was to accommodate the TV antenna in the Motoroi, but it's still present in the Motorola Milestone XT720.
Our quick verdict: We must admit we were surprised by the Milestone XT720 - a phone that's all about the camera isn't much to write home about any more. But the use of Android 2.1 is as good as ever, and the odd chassis design is quite appealing in its own special way.
Read: Motorola Milestone XT720 review
| - Nokia N8 - | --- Sony Ericsson Satio --- | ----- iPhone 4 ----- |
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If you've been a Nokia fan for years, then you'll have noticed that the Finnish firm hasn't been competing at the sharp end of the game for a while now.
The likes of the N97 and X6 have both been trumpeted by Nokia over the last year or so, but neither has particularly won critical acclaim, mostly due to a sub-par OS when compared to the whizz-bang-iness of the iPhone and Android set, as well as taking a veritable age to start using the latest technology, like capacitive screens and slimmer lines.
Now though, the N8 is here, bringing all manner of high end features to a Nokia phone: 12MP camera, HD video recording, reams of internal storage and a high end media player, as well as the new Symbian^3 OS.
Our quick verdict: We're cautiously optimistic about the Nokia N8 - surely the Finns can't keep offering a poor smartphone experience. The hardware on this really is at the sharp end of every category, and the UI has come on leaps and bounds in a few short months - a little more tweaking and Nokia could have a much better phone on its hands than the X6.
Read: Nokia N8 review
| - HTC Desire - | ----- Moto Milestone XT720 ---- | --- Apple iPhone 4 --- |
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Samsung has made the somewhat leftfield decision to launch its own OS and with the new Samsung Wave it gets a phone with top-notch hardware to debut it on.
This isn't just another 'and me' Samsung phone – it's crammed to the hilt with high end features, such as HD video recording, a 1GHz Samsung-own Hummingbird processor, a super-slim chassis, the latest Super AMOLED screen and multi-touch support right out of the box.
However, it's still rocking Samsung's TouchWiz overlay, which is great if you like Samsung phones, but a very different experience for those joining the Korean giant for the first time.
Our quick verdict: The screen is ace, the chassis feels slimmer than the iPhone 4 and the processor whips along at a nice pace. Sadly, the new Bada OS is too nascent to be seen as a contender, but this is a phone that more people will be hankering after than we previously thought.
Read: Samsung Wave review
| - Samsung Galaxy S - | --- HTC Desire --- | ----- iPhone 4 ----- |
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The Palm Pixi Plus – the Pre's dinky sidekick – makes its UK debut and is the latest smartphone to offer a scaled down, affordable alternative to a premium handset.
The new and improved Pixi follows the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and HTC HD Mini into the arena, all of which boast most of the main features without the cumbersome size and cost. Can this be the handset to help web OS reach the masses?
The original Pixi was a US-only release, so we'll treat this as a brand new handset. Not that we have to go into too much detail, the improvements can be summed up in one word: Wi-Fi.
The Pixi earns its Plus by adding 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, but aside from that it's exactly the same handset.
Our quick verdict: It seems like aeons ago since we sat and watched the Palm Pre get announced in Vegas - 18 months ago and Palm hasn't really flourished since. However, we really like the Pixi Plus, with its weeny dimensions and fast processor - the keyboard is pretty snazzy too, much better than that on the Pre.
Read: Palm Pixi Plus review
| - HTC Wildfire - | ----- HTC Hero ---- | --- Palm Pre Plus --- |
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Well, there's just so much to like about this all rounder, isn't there? We could choose the excellent internet, the new camera that's almost is good enough to make us stop moaning about the iPhone always having a rubbish snapper (but not quite, though we do love the autofocus).
We could talk about the increase in speed or the great graphical processing power of the iPhone 3GS. We could even chat about the fact voice control is good, but a little bit pointless 90 per cent of time.
However, we think it's best to say that the best thing about the iPhone is it's an all rounder, the phone for every demographic. While it does some things wrong, it more than makes up for it with the things it does right.
Our quick verdict: Aside from video recording and a compass, the 3GS didn't add a huge amount to the family. That said, it's still benefiting from a big reduction in price after the launch of the iPhone 4, and if you don't want to shell out big bucks for an Apple phone this is still a good device.
Read: Apple iPhone 3GS review
| ------ HTC Legend ----- | ------ iPhone 4 ------ | ------ HTC HD2 ------ |
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The HTC Legend is the follow-up to the super-successful HTC Hero. For many months, the Hero was the top dog in the Android world. But with the arrival of the HTC Legend and Desire, that was always going to change in 2010.
Featuring a high-res OLED screen, as well as the latest version of Android from Google, HTC is clearly looking to jostle its way to the front of the best-selling phone queue with the Legend. The phone also packs a sumptuous unibody aluminium chassis - taking more than a few visual cues from Apple's MacBook range.
It's a great device, and one that we have to say is probably a match for the Apple iPhone. The only problem is that with the weight of the Apple App Store behind it, the iPhone takes some beating.
Our quick verdict: The Legend might not have the press of the Desire, but that doesn't mean it doesn't shine in its own light. The aluminium unibody is brilliant and despite having a much 'slower' processor, the lag is minimal on this Android 2.1 device.
Read: HTC Legend review
| ---- HTC Hero ---- | ---- Apple iPhone 3GS ---- | ---- HTC Desire ---- |
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The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini should be nothing more than a shrunken version of the Xperia X10 – but in reality it's a whole new phone that gives Android a complete makeover.
Oh yes, it's small. Sony Ericsson isn't joking when it says the Xperia X10 Mini is the same size as a credit card. Obviously it's a lot thicker, but the overall size and weight of the super-small Android phone is about equivalent to a packet of Swan matches. It is tiny.
The exterior is smooth with only three buttons on the face of the phone – Menu, Home and Back – and there's no D-pad or joystick whatsoever here.
For a phone so affordable – currently going for around £200 on PAYG deals – the X10 Mini has a remarkably high-class feel about it.
Our quick verdict: The clever implementation of Android with customisable corner icons and a simple yet effective keyboard means it's very easy to use this phone, and even the internet is still a good experience for the world's smallest smartphone.
Read: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini review
| ---- LG Pop GD510 ---- | ---- Xperia X10 ---- | ---- HTC Wildfire ---- |
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The Samsung Galaxy S is the most tech-heavy phone the Samsung has ever made, and TechRadar got the chance to give it a good going over.
The Galaxy S represents a real milestone for both Samsung and Google, as it's the most powerful and feature-rich phone on the market at the moment, edging the HTC Desire plus adding the marketing clout of the Korean electronics giant.
But with Apple stepping up its game with the iPhone 4, Android and Samsung need a big hitter to step up and show the world that they can produce a phone that can take on the might of Jobs, so check out the Samsung Galaxy S and make up your own minds.
Our quick verdict: The Samsung Galaxy S is everything that's good about the Wave, but with Android power to back it up. The Super AMOLED screen is awe inspiring, and the 1GHz Hummingbird processor means the phone never misses a beat.
Read: Samsung Galaxy S review
| ------ HTC Legend ----- | ------ iPhone 4 ------ | ------ HTC HD2 ------ |
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The iPhone 4 is certainly the most impressive iPhone ever, and a big step up from the iPhone 3GS. The flat body is only 9.3 millimeters thick, 24 per cent thinner than the iPhone 3GS at its thickest. It feels great in the hand, and at the keynote Steve Jobs remarked, "Its closest kin is a beautiful old Leica camera."
By far the most in-your-face improvement is iPhone 4's 960x640 screen. It's got 326 pixels per inch, and we're talking tiny pixels, only 78 micrometers wide.
The Retina display, especially, is hands-down the clearest, most enjoyable screen we've seen on a handheld, and the sheer amount of technology packed into the device is surprising.
The iPhone 4 would definitely top our list, were it not for the fairly major flaw which sees 3G reception disappear when you hold the phone with your left hand. It's an embarassing problem which mars an otherwise brilliant handset.
Our quick verdict: We think people are making a little bit too much of a fuss about the reception issue - it shouldn't be there at all but a little shift of the hand sorts things right out. It's still a great phone, but we're really disappointed as this could have been an all time classic without the big flaw.
Read: Apple iPhone 4 review
| ---- Nokia N8 ---- | ---- Samsung Galaxy S ---- | ---- HTC Desire ---- |
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The HTC Desire is essentially the same phone as the Google Nexus One, only with HTC's Sense UI overlay and a reworked chassis. Read: it's like a Nexus One only better.
The Desire is a little on the large side thanks to its 3.7-inch OLED screen, but HTC has had a look at the few foibles the Nexus One has and sorted them out.
Messaging on the HTC Desire is a dream - despite not having a physical keyboard, the eerily responsive typing correction on this device is so sharp we could practically shut our eyes and mash our hands into the keyboard and still type a perfect message.
It's just a brilliant phone.
Our quick verdict: People will inevitably ask if we really think the Desire is better than the iPhone 4, and the truth is it both is and it isn't. It doesn't have the headline grabbing specs perhaps, but it doesn't have the notable flaws either, and that's a sign of a well made phone that won't frustrate users who 'take a punt' on their first HTC.
Read: HTC Desire review
| ---- Samsung Galaxy S ---- | ---- Apple iPhone 4 ---- | ---- HTC Legend ---- |
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The graphics card is without doubt the star of any PC capable of gaming, but the options out there are vast. So it's TechRadar to the rescue with our new and improved definitive guide to the top ten fastest and best commercial graphics cards on the planet.
The graphics card is the thoroughbred racehorse of your rig, but picking through the nags that are on offer out there is not for the faint hearted. In this guide though we'll let you know what's hot, what's cool and what the fastest GPUs available are.
World's fastest graphics cards...
The key thing here is that you don't always need to drop £500 on a new graphics card; the ubiquitous nature of console conversions in the games industry and the relative age of the current generation of consoles means that more often than not the latest PC games aren't going to stretch the fastest GPUs to their limit.
To that end we've also put together a five card shortlist of the best budget graphics cards if you don't feel like selling the kids to fuel your next gaming fix.
So how does your graphics card stand in our countdown, and is it time for an upgrade? Well, there's only one way to find out...
There are a lot of terms and acronyms that get bandied around when talking about graphics cards, and not a lot of explanation to go along with them.
Before we delve into the meat of the feature let's take a minute to clear things up a little.
GPU - This is the graphics processing unit, the chip at the heart of the graphics card. Many cards use the same GPU but partner it with different components and at different clockspeeds to produce slower or faster graphics cards.
GDDR - Graphics Double Data Rate memory is the specific kind of memory that is used on graphics cards.
ROPs - The Render Output unit comes into play during the final stages in the rendering process, bringing together the data from each of the memory buffers in the graphics card's local memory. The more of them you have, the better off you are.
CUDA - The Compute Unified Device Architecture is a coding language Nvidia invented to allow parallel computing on its range of GPUs. From its 8 series upwards all its cards can use CUDA to speed up parallel processing applications, such as video encoding, in a faster way than your computer's CPU.
PhysX - Originally an accelerator chip and software layer from the small company Ageia, Nvidia bought up PhysX and has now applied it to its GPUs, again from the 8 series forward. It allows for more advanced physics simulations, such as liquid or cloth, in games that have been coded with the PhysX software included.
Crossfire and SLI - These are the relevant multi-GPU configurations from both AMD and Nvidia. Both allow multiple graphics cards to be connected together to increase the rendering performance. Historically this has been fraught with driver issues and diminishing returns for the extra cards, but as the latest cards have been released we are getting closer to doubling the performance by adding in a second card.
PCB - The Printed Circuit Board is the physical board that graphics cards (and all other micro-electronics) have their components attached to. The boards are printed with conductive pathways between the relevant components instead of using physical wires.
DirectX - Microsoft's DirectX is a collection of its own proprietary APIs (application programming interfaces) for dealing with multimedia tasks on its own operating systems. The Direct3D part is specifically to do with 3D graphics and utilises hardware acceleration if there is a GPU in place to take advantage of it.
Tesselation - This is one of the key buzzwords to come from Microsoft's latest graphical API, DirectX 11. Essentially it is designed to add extra geometry to a simple polygon using displacement maps to tell the GPU where to raise and lower parts of the polygon as the graphics card computes the data. The idea being to add geometry to objects in a game world without significantly impairing performance and it is set to become a key battleground in the graphics war in the coming years.
As we've already discussed, the fastest graphics cards in the world aren't the only graphics cards you need to think about.
With the fast-paced evolution of the GPU the lower-end cards of today are exponentially better than the budget cards of yesterday. Much of the sub-£100 end of the market is dominated by AMD and this represents a conscious effort on behalf of the Texan company.
Seeing the dominance of Nvidia at the high-end of the graphics market over the last couple of generations AMD decided to put its efforts into sleeker, lower-cost designs hoping that doubling up its cheaper GPUs into multi-GPU cards would deliver competitive cards at the high end.
This strategy has paid off for AMD who now sees its cards being competitive at all price ranges, though most especially at the low-end.
You've also got last generation's cards dropping down in price to the point where they now represent a real bargain. We've picked five of the best budget graphics cards available today for your delectation and delight.
The pick of the bunch at this price has to be last generation's Nvidia GeForce GTX 260. The version two of the GTX 260 is a die-shrink of the GT200 GPU from 65nm to 55nm, which meant Nvidia was able to produce a cheaper, cooler, lower-power edition.
It runs the same GT200b GPU as the superlative GeForce GTX 275, but with reduced clockspeeds across the board. This does make it slightly slower than that card, but against the £150 competition the overclocked GTX 260 has the lead in performance terms. It is purely a DX9/10 card though, with no ability to use the DX11 API.
This is a tough one to call as it really depends on how future-proof you want your gaming rig to be. With the spectre of massed DX11 titles on the horizon do you want to be lagging behind in your GPU's feature-set?
Both the 1GB HD 4870 and HD 5770 are available for around the £125 price-point but offer different things.
The HD 4870 has a definite edge in DX10 games, but the HD 5770 has the added ability of being able to take advantage of all the goodness DX11 offers.
That said your actual gaming experience would be faster on the HD 4870 across the board as the added strain that DX11's tessellation would put on the HD 5770 slows it down considerably.
At this price-point we get much the same duel as we had at the £125 mark. The Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 is the performance card being just a rebranded 9800GTX, in its time a £300 card and then the pinnacle of single-GPU cards.
There are also GTS 250 cards out there carrying a die-shrink of the 9800GTX's G92 GPU, the G92b, giving it lower power and cooling requirements. It's competition is the 1GB HD 5750, a DX11 part but unfortunately no performance king, especially at the higher resolutions.
Here there is no competition at all; it's all about the ATI Radeon HD 5670 straight down the line. It's not an incredible performer compared to the more expensive cards by any stretch of the imagination, but a card for this price that can run Far Cry 2, with all it's DX10 finery, at 2,560x1,600, in double figure framerates, is nothing to be sniffed at.
At this pricepoint you're not really looking at 3D gaming to any high degree, but the ATI Radeon HD 5450 will do the goods for your small form-factor media centre if you fancy a bit of World of Warcraft on your HD television. It's a half-height, passively-cooled card that doesn't have the raw grunt to throw pixels around at high resolutions but will do all you need in terms of encoding and decoding HD content in a lounge PC.
AMD's last-generation super-card still holding on to the top 10
Coming a lengthy nine months after the launch of its inaugural HD 48xx card, the HD 4870, the HD 4890 was much more than just an overclocked version of AMD's fastest single-GPU card of the time.
And batting at number ten in our chart of the fastest graphics cards around, the revisions AMD made to the GPU at the heart of this card made it a much more competitive product in such a crowded marketplace.
The clockspeeds have been upped from the HD 4870, but only by a somewhat measly 13 per cent - from 750MHz to 850MHz - and the actual make up of the chip hasn't changed much from the outside.
It still houses the HD 4870's 800 stream processors, 40 texture units and 16 ROPs, but the chip itself has been reworked from the ground up to enable the higher clockspeeds and the other board components were tweaked too.
Combined with the constant evolution and maturation of AMD's driver set, this has all lead to the HD 4890 still being a relevant card today.
Indeed all the work AMD put in to create a card competitive with Nvidia's fastest single-GPU card paid off, shown by the HD 4890 being almost on a par with the monolithic GTX 285.
There are a host of overclocked versions which close the gap even more, and if you can palate the thought of jumping into a Crossfire setup adding a second HD 4890 isn't a bad option given those mature drivers.
Still, you always have to be wary of multi-GPU configurations if you're going to be playing the latest gaming releases - if there is a driver problem you could be waiting a couple of months for an effective fix to be put in action.
Read: ATI Radeon HD 4890 review
The GTX 275 has all of the Nvidia power but at a fraction of the cost
Coming closely on the heels of the HD 4890 is Nvidia's brilliant GTX 275. Why is it brilliant? Well, from a business point of view it isn't all that, but from a consumer's it was every bit as important a release as the 8800GT was back in its day.
Barely three month prior Nvidia had released its refresh of the GTX 280, the GTX 285. It was a die-shrink from the 65nm manufacturing process to the new 55nm process, meaning smaller chips, less power draw and hence could be higher clocked leading to improved performance.
The GTX 285 was, and still is, a well performing card. The problem was that it was significantly more expensive than the GTX 275, which wouldn't have been a problem if it was also significantly faster.
Unfortunately it wasn't. The GTX 275 is so close to the performance of the GTX 285 that on its release Nvidia practically retired its own fastest single-GPU card in one stroke. There simply was no point spending the extra cash on a GTX 285 when the GTX 275 could do practically everything the GTX 285 could do for a fraction of the price.
It's got the same basic GPU core and only very slightly lower clock, shader and memory speeds. You lose four ROPs, just over 100MB of DRAM and a smaller memory bus, but in real-world terms that makes so little difference as to be barely noticeable.
There is very little between this and AMD's 4890 making the bottom two in our fastest GPU countdown for the most part completely interchangeable.
We've placed the GTX 275 higher simply because it represents far better value for money and performs a shade faster in more of our tests.
There's also the added bonus of the PhysX and CUDA capabilities of the Nvidia family of graphics cards, allowing you to utilise some of the extra gaming features PhysX gives you and the GPU computing features of the CUDA programming language.
Read: Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 review
Still a very speedy card, but less relevant these days
This, the GTX 285, was Nvidia's fastest single-GPU card right up to the launch of the GTX 480 last month.
It was the six-month refresh and die-shrink of Nvidia's thoroughly impressive, and mightily successful GTX 280 card. The GT200b GPU beating at its heart packed in the same 1.4bn transistors in a chip that was actually over 100mm sq smaller, which is why it was able to ramp up the clockspeeds of this lightning fast DX10 card to such an extent.
The move from 65nm manufacturing process to 55nm then was a far smoother ride than the move from 55nm to 40nm has proven to be with the scarcity, lower-than-expected performance and price of the latest Nvidia graphics cards.
This die-shrink also meant that it was far less power-hungry than the outgoing GTX 280, with a maximum power draw of 183W against it's older brother's 236W.
The win-win situation of more performance for less power made the GTX 285 one of the most desireable graphics cards of its time and the fact that it can still keep up with the most recent GPUs proves that it's still got a lot going for it.
At this price it's a little prohibitive to new buyers looking at the other cards in the market around the same price point. There is a significant jump in performance moving up to just a HD 5850, which is only another £10 at today's prices, and that is a card that will be as happy playing around in DX11 as it is in the venerable surrounds of DX10.
The problem though is that GTX 275 shaped fly in the ointment. On the release of that card a little less than three months later, Nvidia practically retired its most powerful single-GPU card of the time.
The GTX 275 as we've shown is a gnat's hair away from the GTX 285 in performance terms and is significantly cheaper. It was a shame for the GTX 285 that Nvidia effectively boxed it so quickly, though for us consumers it was a godsend.
Read: Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 review
The first affordable performance DX11 card is a cracker
AMD's HD 5850 represented the first vaguely affordable, performance DX11 card, and despite being a way down the list of fastest graphics cards, in some ways it still is.
As the first DX11 cards on the market the HD 5850 and HD 5870 had a price premium attached to them as Nvidia's response was some way off at the time.
Prices have come down and what was once a £300 card is now a more reasonable £250. You should expect prices to fall off even further with Nvidia's Fermi cards relatively close to availability, hopefully dropping this card closer to the £200 mark.
In performance terms it is still quite a way off the numbers posted by the DX11 glory-boys, the HD 5870, HD 5970 and GTX 480, GTX 470 partnerships.
Still, it is capable of topping the 30fps mark at the highest settings at the eye-bleeding resolution of 2,560x1,600, the native res of 30-inch panels.
It's also far smaller than any of the faster cards in this list, making it a much better bet for small form-factor PCs that still want to pack one hell of a punch.
A word of warning though; if you've been distracted by the £200 HD 5830 as a viable alternative to the HD 5850 it's time to think again.
That card is one of the biggest irrelevances in today's graphics market and represents little value for the money you're saving over the HD 5850. The HD 5830 doesn't make an impact on the fastest graphics cards list, failing to compete as it does against the much cheaper last generation of cards. Steer clear.
A pair of HD 5850s in Crossfire setup also is worth a look if you're after some multi-GPU action for your rig.
Or indeed if you can't afford any of the top three right now, but want the option of adding a second card later. The HD 5970 is essentially a couple of overclocked HD 5850 GPUs strapped to a single PCB and therefore you should get close to that awesome card's performance with a pair of these.
A single-card, multi-GPU graphics card done the right way
The HD 4870 X2 is another of the last generation of graphics cards that has clung onto its place in the top ten performing graphics cards thanks to its ground-breaking design.
For years both ATI and Nvidia had been trying to create a multi-GPU card that combined two graphics processors in one single card design. And both had failed quite impressively until the HD 4870 X2 hit the market proving that it coule be done and done right.
Nvidia had its fingers burnt with the terrifically under-performing, and woefully unsupported, GeForce 7950 GX2 and AMD had a tough time with its inaugural multi-GPU card, the HD 3870 X2.
Just one generation later though and the HD 4870 X2 showed just how its done. The fact that it is still competitive in performance terms with the current generation of DirectX 11 cards is proof of just that.
Obviously the card isn't able to cope with the rigours of DX11, and the tessellated goodness that entails, but for general graphical performance it's got it where it counts.
The difficulty is that at this price you are always going to want to push for the newer card with a modicum of future-proofing. Anyone purchasing this card for over £300 now is making a grave error, but if you've already got one purring away in your rig it's worth knowing that what was once the pinnacle of graphical performance is still not that far off the top almost two years down the line.
And in the fast paced evolution of computing that's an aeon.
The real problem with the twin-GPU HD 4870 X2, pricing aside, is the heat that the two graphics chips produce. In the vanilla flavour the stock cooler is capable enough to keep things running smoothly, if a little warm.
Many of the overclocked versions though are unfortunately stuck with that same stock cooler leading to issues further down the line. We had an overclocked version in a rig of ours and barely three months later it was regularly falling over because one core was seriously over-heating, leading to permanent damage to the card.
So it's still a quick card, but beware of the cooling.
Read: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 review
The first DX11 card that hit the market is still right up there with the big boys
ATI's HD 5870 is the card that kicked off the whole DirectX 11 bandwagon, and sits comfortably at number five in our list of the fastest graphics cards in the world.
Just a couple of weeks ago it would have been far higher, but the recent launch of Nvidia's GTX 470 and GTX 480 has relegated it down the list.
Still, it's well over half a year old now, and in graphical terms that makes it an old hand. The bonus of that is that AMD has had time to fully mature its driver set through its usual monthly driver updates.
That means it's about as stable a DX11 card as you're going to find, with the value-added extra of also being rock-solid when set up in a Crossfire configuration. With two HD 5870s connected together you'll find it a far more powerful graphical setup than even the super HD 5970.
The worry for the HD 5870 is the fact that as such an early DX11 part it is simply not going to be able to compete with the Nvidia big boys when it comes to the burgeoning use of tessellation in PC gaming.
The Nvidia cards were delayed partly to ensure they could cope with the demands of tessellation with the chips being fully designed with that in mind. The architecture of AMD's Cypress GPU, the chip powering all the HD 58xx cards, has only one tessellation engine where the Nvidia cards have up to 15 (one in each of the shader microprocessors).
It's not apples for apples as they work in very different ways, that said though Nvidia's performance in the tessellation-heavy Heaven 2.0 benchmark puts its cards far in advance of the HD 5870.
The other concern is the price of the card itself. It was an expensive ol' graphics card when it first came out and it still is seven months down the line. With the GTX 470 being priced directly in competition with this card though you should expect AMD to slash the prices of both the HD 5870 and the HD 5850 once Nvidia is able to actually get its cards in stores and available for purchase.
It may only be fifth in the top ten performance graphics cards line up, but it's out their in the wild and doing the business, just keep an eye out for the price drop and you could be in for a bargain.
Read: ATI Radeon HD 5870 review
Still pumping out the pixels with the best of them, Nvidia's venerable GTX 295 is sitting pretty at number four in our top ten GPUs. This was Nvidia's last multi-GPU card and has ruled the roost for a long time, it was only AMD's latest dual-GPU card, the HD 5970, that managed to best it in performance terms.
The GTX 295 has just about got the edge in performance terms over the HD 5870, thanks to those twin GT200b GPUs humming away in that sinister-looking, monolithic casing.
These chips mean that the card can still play with the big boys even when the resolutions reach the eye-popping heights of 2,560x1,600.
The downside of this last generation graphics card though is that it simply cannot stand the pace when you factor in DirectX 11 performance. There are still relatively few real DX11 titles out there to take advantage of the hardware though, so the GTX 295 can hold its head up high for a while yet.
The stumbling block remains that the price hasn't dropped in a long while, and it is unlikely now to ever do so.
You may be able to pick one of these up second hand for the price of a brand new HD 5870, but anyone with any sense must surely pick the AMD card over this. The HD 5870 is only just shy in terms of raw performance and can cope with the all the tessellated goodness that DirectX 11 offers.
So, while it's still got the performance where it counts, the GTX 295's days are well and truly numbered, and we wouldn't recommend this as a purchase to anyone looking to upgrade.
As a hint to the future though, and if Nvidia can come to terms with the incredible heat produced by even a single GTX 480, we could well see Nvidia looking to the multi-GPU solution to [spoiler alert] give it back the lead in the graphics war.
Read: Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 review
The GTX 47 is finally here, but was it worth the wait?
Not so hot on the heels of Nvidia's first DX11 graphics cards comes the GeForce GTX 470, an even more cut down version of the GF100 GPU the green company is rightfully proud of.
Given the nigh-on £500 pricetag of its big brother this represents the most affordable Fermi card out there. There is a GTX 460 reportedly coming out in June, which will be another cut down GF100, before the real mainstream parts really start rolling out mid-summer.
For now though the GTX 470 is the third fastest graphics card in the world and that has come as quite a surprise, not least to us here at TechRadar.
The innumerable delays to its launch and the incredible scarcity of cards meant that before we managed to cadge our very own card we held out little hope for it. Sure it shared the same price point as ATI's HD 5870, but if it was so shy then it surely didn't have the brass cojones to best it.
Well, luckily for Nvidia it does. Just. At the lower end of the resolution spectrum, at the native 22-inch resolution of 1,680x1,050, the card is a fair way ahead of the HD 5870, but when things get cranked up the performance isn't quite so good.
Indeed in our World in Conflict benchmark it actually dropped behind. Still, thanks to its Fermi roots the GTX 470 has still got the tessellation goods and this is more of a future-looking card.
Still, Nvidia is having problems getting enough cards out into the market meaning that in those terms at least the AMD cards have the edge, having gotten over their own production problems.
Many of Nvidia's manufacturing partners had only the one sample card doing the rounds for the entire of the UK press, and that says a lot about how easy it will be for the consumer, you, to actually find a GTX 470 in stock anywhere.
Read: Nvidia GeForce GTX 470
The fastest single-GPU card in the world. Job done.
When you come this late to the party you need to make sure you bring one hell of a good bottle of wine and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480 is just about good enough to justify its tardiness. Coming almost six months after AMD launched the first DirectX 11 graphics cards ever things were looking fairly bleak for the Californian company.
Yields from its 40nm production facilities meant it wasn't getting the number of fully functional processors out of its wafers that it wanted and so it had to cut the expected performance of these chips in order to improve the number of good chips coming out of the factory.
The full Graphics Fermi 100 GPU (GF100) is a marvel of graphical architecture, but some of the 512 small processing (CUDA) cores had to be dropped. The GTX 480 then comes with 480 of these cores, but still manages to pack one hell of a punch.
The key for Fermi, and the purported reason for its lengthy delay, was to ensure it had the best possible tessellation performance.
Tessellation is going to be one of the key tasks for future GPUs, the ability to render more detailed geometry rather than simply better, smoother textures, and Nvidia wants to be at the forefront.
The difficulty is that once tessellation becomes that important, and that heavily used in modern gaming development, this card may not quite have the grunt. For now though, if you can find one of these rare-as-dog's-eggs cards, it's still an incredible piece of engineering.
The minimum aim for the GTX 480 was to beat AMD's HD 5870 and thankfully for AMD it has managed that. Unfortunately for Nvidia though it cannot lay claim to the number one slot in our best graphics card list, and instead must settle for the fastest single-GPU card. I wonder then if you can guess which card grabbed the top spot...
Read: Nvidia GeForce GTX 480
More powerful than Steve Jobs...
So here it is; the fastest commercial graphics card available today; the Radeon HD 5970.
AMD has taken the top spot and managed to hold out against the very, very late Fermi card from Nvidia, the GeForce GTX 480.
This twin-GPU beauty is one big, beefy, powerhouse of a graphics card, capable of spewing out polygons like last night's bad chicken kebab. And it bloody well should be considering it'll cost you the best part of £600 for that simple pleasure.
It isn't just two HD 5870s strapped onto one slab of PCB though - there's definitely nothing simple about fitting two graphics cards into one form factor.
The actual GPUs are slightly slower than a vanilla HD 5870, making them more akin to twin overclocked HD 5850s. This also means that a Crossfire setup sporting two actual HD 5870s will beat this card in a foot race. But this is Crossfire made easy and that's something that could rarely be said in the past.
Surprisingly, given the power requirements, it doesn't get quite as hot as the volcanic GTX 480, a card that actually wiped some of our fingerprints during testing. And, again surprisingly, it's remarkably stable and happy to be overclocked.
Some would say though that overclocking what is already the fastest graphics card in the world is a bit of an overkill, but the option is there for the brave. There are already concerns over driver support though, given that DX11 launch title, and AMD Game title, DiRT 2 didn't support the multi-GPU HD 5970 until very recently, so it could present an issue going forward.
The only real problem with the HD 5970 though is that incredible price. You can actually buy gaming PCs that will do a sterling job for the price of this graphics card alone.
That said it is most definitely the fastest graphics card out there, posting figures with a healthy lead over the closest competitor from Nvidia. Considering that just a couple of generations ago ATI looked to be choking on Nvidia's dust with the HD 3xxx series of cards, it's quite incredible that it has managed to take the top spot and hold it against cards coming out almost half a year later.
Hats off to you then HD 5970, you are the fastest graphics card in the world.
Read: ATI Radeon HD 5970 review
AMD's ATI brand is the no holds-barred winner in the performance graphics war then, with the incredibly fast Radeon HD 5970.
It is, without doubt, the single fastest graphics card commercially available right now. But does that necessarilly equate to being the best?
There are many different things to factor into what constitutes the best graphics card on the planet, and performance is certainly not the least of them.
The price/performance ratio though has to be the most important factor and as good as the HD 5970 is, it's hard to justify spending almost £600 on a single graphics card, no matter how fast it is.
In gaming terms graphics cards have a far longer shelf life than they've had in years, as shown by the number of last generation cards still outperforming the latest GPUs.
This is mostly down to the fact that most games are multi-platform now and so developers are designing games to run on five year old hardware, namely the Xbox 360.
That means that unless you're playing on a 30-inch panel, at its 2,560x1,600 native res you'll get lightening performance out of any of the cards in our top ten graphics cards list.
Indeed you're still looking at above 30fps across the board even at that resolution.
It has to be said then that the real performance sweet spot is around the £250 mark, with the HD 5850.
And remember you can still get great performance, though not the future-proofing of DX11 capabilities, when you dip below £200. But no matter what your budget, as we've shown, there is a great graphics card there waiting for you.
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