I completed my system upgrade this past week with the purchase of a shiny new graphics card.

I initially had placed an order with Komplett for the mighty Asus AX800 XT/TVD some time back, which is, for the none-technically-inclined, “effing fast”. However, the scheduled arrival date changed from July 26 to September 1, so I thought “nuts to that” and went hunting around for other options. Overclockers.co.uk had, according to their web site, some PowerColor X800 Pro cards in stock, so I thought “Right then” and ordered one. And lo! it arrived a couple of days later.

And it's pretty nippy, it must be said. Not quite as quick as the XT card I was originally planning to get, but pretty impressive all the same – City of Heroes now at 1600×1200, C&C Generals the same, Ground Control II and Thief: Deadly Shadows both at 1280×1024. All with high detail and antialiasing and anisotropy turned up high. I look forward to seeing the realm of Azeroth through this window.

Plus the DoubleCross tech demo is rather impressive, too. I said a year or so ago that we'd soon reach the stage where graphics cards would be able to render movie-quality scenes in real time, and this tech demo shows that we're pretty damn close to being there.

In summary: Mmm, shiny.