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With price tags of $400 and $500 dollars for the most advanced graphics cards, it's easy to feel left out of the 3D game. But true to form, a few months after the next-generation, high-end cards are trotted out with much fanfare, the midrange cards begin to emerge from the shadows cast by their powerful, flashy siblings. New to the scene are Nvidia's GeForce 6600 GT and ATI's Radeon X700, both competing for midrange dollars. Early benchmark results don't impress, especially on newer games.
Upside: At least it won't be that expensive. For $200, roughly the cost of a home gaming console, Nvidia's GeForce 6600 GT card should provide adequate performance in older 3D games, and it will let you play the newer titles, provided you're willing to sacrifice some higher-end image-quality tweaks. Fortunately, games such as Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 are designed with the mass market in mind, so they should look good at lower graphics settings. Intriguingly, the GeForce 6600 GT is also Scalable Link Interface (SLI) ready. In English, this means that with the proper motherboard, you'll be able to connect two PCI Express versions of the GeForce 6600 GT in the same computer. Granted, you need the high-end motherboard in the first place to make this feature an option, but doubling up on a midrange graphics card could be a great way to upgrade your 3D performance down the road without having to junk your old parts.
