Bottom Line
If you're a high-end, performance freak, then obviously you would be looking at the best of the best; either the Voodoo5 5500 or the GeForce2 GTS would suit you the best (man... that's a lot of "bests"). Personally, I would prefer a GeForce2 GTS over the Voodoo5 as the performance of the GeForce2 is superior and the image quality of nVidia cards are slightly better than their 3dfx counterparts. I'm sure that you know you have to pay a premium for these products, but these will give you the best performance money can buy. Of course, to take advantage of this high-end video performance, you'll obviously need one of the higher-end CPU's and motherboards mentioned in Part I of this guide.

Not everyone requires the best of the best in performance, and not everyone has that much cash to burn, that's why we have other products such as the GeForce256 that will provide a sufficient amount of performance for gaming, and will save you a few bucks. The GeForce256, in my opinion, already has plenty of power for almost everyone and most people will be plentifully happy with it, but make sure to spend the little extra dough in getting a DDR memory version of the card as the SDR memory version of the card performs a fair amount slower. You'll probably also want to pair this up with a high-end CPU and motherboard combo, although it might also be fine on a low-end CPU... of course, at the loss of a fair amount of performance.

[Ed: nVidia has just recently released a stripped-down version of the GeForce2 GTS called the GeForce2 MX. Performance is on par with GeForce256 cards at a fraction of the cost. I suggest you take a look at boards coming out soon that's built on this solution as an alternative to the GeForce256.]

Then there are some who rarely play games, or even if they do, don't require them to look the absolute best. For you people, a version of the older TNT2 or Voodoo3 chipsets will do you fine. Again, I would personally opt for the nVidia product over the 3dfx because of almost equal performance with the nVidia product taking a slight edge in image quality; however, TNT2 cards are getting harder and harder to find these days, while the Voodoo3 is quite widely available. Also, there are PCI versions of the Voodoo3 that are available for you people who have low-end CPU and motherboard combinations and don't have an AGP slot. With this in mind, I would try to get a hold of a TNT2 card, at a comparable price to the Voodoo3 (some places will raise the prices of older cards to compensate for demand), and if you can't, or don't have an AGP slot on your new motherboard, I would get a Voodoo3 (PCI version if you don't have an AGP slot). Also, as mentioned before, this type of a setup is only ideal for you people who rarely play any graphics-intensive games and would just like descent performance to save some dough.

Then, of course, there are the other offerings from other manufacturers such as ATI, S3 and Matrox. These products are good for those who will live with low-end 3D graphics performance, and would like to save a lot of money. Also, if you need a card with a special ability (for example, ATI's stellar video and DVD performance or Matrox's dual-head display), then I would also settle for one of these cards.

Of course, if you prefer to save all the money and settle for a low-end, built-into the motherboard solution, then you can also do so. These types of setups are for those who never play graphics-intensive games and just need some sort of a basic graphic output. Let me warn you before you put that money back into your pocket that these built-in solutions are very low performing and so make sure you're willing to give up a lot of the power of your new computer. Needless to mention, you're going to be pairing these built-in solutions with low-end CPU's.

On to: Sound