HotHardware Holiday Gift Guide 2010

Name: HotHardware Holiday Gift Guide 2010 - Page 5
Brand: HotHardware

by Ray Willington — Monday, November 29, 2010, 11:55 AM EDT

Outputs And Figgy Pudding: Video Cards

Even if you just purchased a new GPU 12 months ago, there's plenty of reasons to check out a new one. Just have a quick glance at recent benchmarks from the newest cards if you don't believe us. There's no denying that GPUs age mighty quickly, but there's still nothing quite as exciting as slapping a new pixel-pusher into your desktop.

GIGABYTE GV-N450-1GI GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB - $119

Fermi? Check! The GeForce GTS 450 is a potent GPU, and even at just over $100, anyone receiving this will love what it does to their FPS meter. It also comes with 1GB of dedicated memory and supports technologies including NVIDIA 3D Vision and NVIDIA PhysX.

XFX Radeon HD 6850- $199

A 775MHz Radeon HD 6850 core, EyeFinity support, and loads of output options? It's all here, in a great mid-range gift option. HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort are all included, as is 1GB of video memory, DirectX 11 support and a rad enclosure.

EVGA GeForce GTX 460 Superclocked Edition - $199

336 CUDA cores, DirectX 11 support, and a mini-HDMI 1.4 output? Yep, and it's "SuperClocked" on top of all that. If your Secret Santa complains over this gem, they've got issues.

ASUS ENGTX580/2DI/1536MD5 GeForce GTX 580 - $529

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 is currently the king of single-GPU powered video cards. Asus takes NVIDIA’s already potent reference design and dials things up a notch by factory overclocking the card from the reference specs of 772MHz for the GPU and 1,544MHz for the shader cores to 782MHz and 1,564MHz, respectively (the memory clock remains 4,008MHz). Factor in support for PhyxX, CUDA, DX11 and 3D Vision alongside its killer gaming performance and the Asus ENGTX580 becomes all the more attractive.

ASUS ARES/2DIS/4GD5 Radeon HD 5870 X2 4GB - $1099

Can't leave you without a super high-end option for the SUPER special people, right? This is a killer, killer card meant only for the hardcore enthusiasts, offering 4GB of RAM, dual Radeon HD 5870 GPUs on a single PCB, a huge fan and specs that would blow anyone's mind. Need we say more?