CHOOSING A NEXT-GEN graphics card is tough. First, one has to decide between ATI's Radeon X800 family and NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 series. That decision alone is a daunting one, requiring one to weigh DOOM 3 performance, potential Half-Life 2 performance, the merits of NVIDIA's Shader Model 3.0 implementation, and ATI's stellar performance in current DirectX 9 applications. There's also the religion factor. These days, choosing between ATI and NVIDIA is like declaring a religious affiliation, and there's plenty of rabid preaching on both sides of the fence.

Settling on a GeForce or Radeon is just part of the equation, though. Once you've narrowed the field down to a product family or even a specific GPU, there's the question of board manufacturers. Some offer better warranties, many bundle in all sorts of extras, and others even go so far as to offer cards overclocked in the box.

To explore what different graphics card manufacturers have to offer on the GeForce 6800-series side of the fence, we've rounded up cards from BFG, Chaintech, eVGA, inno3D, and PNY. Which manufacturer's implementation reigns supreme? Read on to find out.