XFX 6200TC review

If you have zero interest in playing games on your PC, there's no point in spending hundreds of pounds on an all-singing, all-dancing graphics card.

But you don't need to be an adrenaline junkie to need a PC with a bit of graphical oomph. If you fancy playing just the occasional game, and you're stuck with the under-powered graphics chip built into your PC's motherboard, you'll need to upgrade. Don't worry, though - you don't need deep pockets. The XFX 6200TC fits into a new PCI-Express slot, and costs just a smidgen under fifty quid.

The XFX uses nVidia's new 'Turbocache' technology. Rather than going to the expense of fitting 128 or 256MB of memory to the graphics card itself, XFX has fitted a more sensible 64MB. The card supplements this when necessary by borrowing some of your PC's main memory. This means you'll need at least 512MB RAM in your PC to get the most out of the card.

We didn't expect amazing results in our Doom 3 games test from such a modestly priced card, but the XFX acquitted itself pretty well. At our standard - and very demanding - test settings, the 6200TC struggled to a tortoise-slow 5.7 frames per second. This is with power-sapping anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled to smooth out jagged edges in the picture and keep everything pin-sharp. Lowering the resolution from 1024x768 to 800x600 and turning off anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering resulted in a much smoother 29.3 frames per second. All of Doom 3's fancy graphical effects were present and correct. That's plenty good enough if you just want to play the odd game, and you're not too fussed about having the very highest graphics quality.

Another benefit of the card is that it provides two monitor outputs. The connections on the XFX are the better-quality digital DVI type. Those who aren't lucky enough to have a flat-panel monitor with a digital connector needn't fear: two adapters are included that enable you to hook up monitors with an analogue D-Sub input. An S-Video output lets you hook the card up to a TV.

The XFX's 3D graphics performance isn't stunning, but for just under £50 you get a card that'll let you play recent games - and with no cooling fans on it, it's quiet too!