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If you haven't bought a video card in a while, you can expect the following features as standard of the new mid-range: you'll be able game in DX10 at playable framerates; you'll be able to play high-definition video using your grapics card (instead of your CPU); and you'll have two DVI ports, in case you want to run multiple displays.    

Palit 9600GT Sonic

Price: $199 at NewEgg

Released only a few weeks ago, the 9600 GT is the first of NVIDIA's 'new' ninth generation of video cards. The 'new' in the previous sentence is in quotation marks because there really isn't all that much that is truly new in the design of 9600GT -- it is more just an incremental improvement over the 8800GT. But that's not a bad thing -- the overclocked Palit 9600GT Sonic turned out to be a capable performer, well up to the task of giving a HD3870 or 8800GT a run for the money. Additionally, this 9600GT had the first DisplayPort we've seen on a video card (designed by VESA, DisplayPort promises to one day become the standard interface for digital display devices), a quiet and effective cooler, and solid DX10 performance.

One thing to be aware of if you are thinking of getting a 9600 GT is that the GPU clock scales to your PCI-E bus frequency. You can read more about this over here. For testing, we kept our PCI-E frequency locked at 100 to mitigate difficulties from this contentious 'feature' of the 9600 GT.

Pro's: Numerous ports (2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, SPDIF out.) 

Con's: Oversized orange plastic 'shroud' (covering) may get in the way of the SATA connectors on your motherboard.

PowerColor HD 3850 Xtreme PCS 512MB

Price: $185 at NewEgg

This HD 3850 continues to impress, and has probably been included in more benchmarks than any other video card reviewed on Neoseeker. PowerColor did an excellent job with this HD 3850: not only is it overclocked, but it has 512MB of GDDR3, which is uncommon for HD 3850 cards. Often this HD 3850 would only trail a little behind the more expensive HD 3870's, making this 'Xtreme' card a good purchase -- especially when it was first released. However, with the price drops of the HD 3870's and of NVIDIA's 9600GT/8800GT/GTS, this HD3850 faces some strong competition.

Pro's: A fast HD3850 with 512MB of memory.

Con's: A fast HD3850 at $185 is a tough sell due to the stiff competition around this price-point.

VisionTek HD3870

Price: $219 at BestBuy

This HD3870 was the first graphics card from VisionTek that we have reviewed here at Neoseeker, and it was a nice one, winning a "Recommended" award. The VisionTek HD3870 was reasonably priced, and had a quality, non-reference cooling solution on it, which allowed for a nice, out-of-the-box overclock. Though it did not come with a game, this VisionTek HD3870 showed itself to be a good choice for enthusiasts who want to try pushing a HD3870 to the limits.   

Pro's: Nice cooler. Limited warranty.

Con's: Cooler can get a bit loud with heavy GPU loads.

XFX 8800 GT 256MB Alpha Dog Edition 'XXX'

Price: $199 at ZipZoomFly

This XFX 8800 GT 256MB was a bit of a surprise: at lower resolutions, there was not much of a performance gap between this card and its 512MB 8800 GT brethren. The performance gap between the this card and 512MB 8800GT's definitely widened though, once resolutions started to get higher in our benches, or high levels of AA were used (4xAA+). Nonetheless, this overclocked XFX card was a strong contender against the HD 3850's, and should still put up a good fight. It looks like XFX is phasing out their 256MB 8800GT's though, as this card only has limited availability currently. It looks like XFX is replace this card with a slower (or less overclocked) version of their 8800 GT 512MB's. With the price advantage of going the 256MB route quickly evaporating, you might want to look over this option and go for something with 512MB's -- but if you can get something similar to card for a cheap price, you might want to check out our benchmarks and judge for yourself.

Pro's: Can keep up with many 512MB 8800 GT cards.

Con's: At this price, it's currently about the same price as a 512MB 8800 GT.