WE SPEND A LOT of time covering high-end graphics cards, and while it's nice to ride the bleeding edge, it ain't cheap. Enthusiasts, however, are notoriously cheap. We appreciate the impressive performance feats achieved by high-end products, but we'd rather not pay the price premium associated with having the fastest card on the block. Instead, we seek out the sweet spot—an almost magical blend of price and performance that delivers unquestionable value.

In the graphics card market, there tend to be two sweet spots. The first resides around $300, where watered-down flavors of flagship products deliver great performance for serious gamers. Three hundred bucks is a lot to drop on a graphics card, though. Fortunately, a second sweet spot exists below $200. Here, cards like the GeForce 6600 GT have enjoyed phenomenal popularity by providing plenty of performance at a price that most can afford.

NVIDIA's replacement for the GeForce 6600 is the new GeForce 7600 series. Made up of GS and GT variants, the 7600 line takes over where the 6600 left off, extending the green team's domination of the mid-range market. NVIDIA's board partners have jumped all over the 7600 series, offering flavors that mix higher clock speeds with new cooler designs, VIVO capabilities, lifetime warranties, and attractive software bundles. But which GeForce 7600 is the sweetest? We've rounded up five cards from BFG, Gigabyte, MSI, and XFX to find out.