The contestants are ATI’s Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB GDDR4 and XFX’s GeForce 8600 GT XXX 256 MB GDDR3 card.  The ATI version of that card is exceedingly rare, only the Sapphire cards are up for sale on Newegg and Pricegrabber, although the specs do remain the same.  [H]ard|OCP did a fair amount of research to find two cards that are priced exactly the same (barring mail in rebate that makes the nVIDIA card cheaper), so the apples-to-apples comparison is dead on.

Ryan’s review of the PNY 8800 GTX XLR8 will appeal more to the speed freaks, it’s been overclocked beyond the speeds of the first 8800 Ultras.
“The ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT is here for us to put it through its DX10 paces. Who will take home the crown in the first full DirectX 10 game under Windows Vista? New games including Oblivion: Shivering Isles, WoW: Burning Crusade, Lord of the Rings Online, and Lost Planet.”

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

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