Here's the good stuff. If you have a system running ~2Ghz or better and any of the cards mentioned in this article, you are going to be able to play any of the latest games at maximum detail without a hitch.

So what's to differentiate them? Well, it's time to start cranking up the image quality by enabling antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering.

3DMark2001SE	Source: FutureMark

By combining DirectX8 support with completely new graphics, it continues to provide good overall system benchmarks. 3DMark2001SE has been created in cooperation with the major 3D accelerator and processor manufacturers to provide a reliable set of diagnostic tools. The suite demonstrates 3D gaming performance by using real-world gaming technology to test a system's true performance abilities. Tests include: DirectX8 Vertex Shaders, Pixel Shaders and Point Sprites, DOT3 and Environment Mapped Bump Mapping, support for Full Scene Anti-aliasing and Texture Compression and two game tests using Ipion real-time physics.

Higher numbers denote better performance.

3DMark2001SE Benchmark Results with AA
	Video Card	3DMarks	Ranking
1.	Gigabyte FX5950 Ultra 2x AA	16078
2.	Gigabyte FX5950 Ultra QC AA	15957
3.	Gigabyte FX5950 Ultra 4x AA	14872
4.	Gigabyte FX5950 Ultra 6x AA	7897
5.	Gigabyte FX5950 Ultra 8x AA	6336

Anti-aliasing, as you probably know, is the process of smoothing out the jagged edges (or 'jaggies') at the edges of 3D rendered objects. This is accomplished by blending the colour of the pixels used around the edges of the object with the colours of the pixels filling the 3D objects immediately next to the object in question, 'smoothing out' the edges.

Properly done, anti-aliasing (or AA) gives an impressive boost to image quality, making 3D objects in the foreground appear much more distinct and separate from the background images. AA also places a huge strain on the videocard, however, as it requires each frame to be rendered multiple times in order to sample and blend the colours of the pixels in each frame.

Quake III Arena	Source: ID Software

The FX59XX line of GPUs by Nvidia are capable of 8X anti-aliasing, something that ATI cannot yet match. On the other hand, Nvidia seems to have a few problems with the 6X anti-aliasing mode in their drivers right now, as evidenced by the out-of-wack scores in 3Dmark 2001, and the complete refusal of 6X AA mode to work in Q3…

In general though, the Quake 3 AA benchmarks really show the advantage of the extra bandwidth the GV-N595U boasts in comparison to the ATI offerings. As is a reoccurring theme, no huge difference exists between the 5900 and the FX5950 cards.