Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT and 9500 GT

Verdict: You'll need to spend more money if you want to play modern games.

The 9400 GT and 9500 GT sit at the bottom of the GeForce 9-series range, but even so, Nvidia boldly claims that the 9500 GT provides 'a supreme visual experience and realistic gameplay in today's most popular games'.

Both GPUs run at the same 550MHz frequency, but have subtly different features. While the 9400 GT has just eight texture processors and the same number of ROPs, the 9500 GT has 16 texture processors and eight ROPs. The main difference, however, is the number of stream processors - the 9500 GT has a mere 32, while the 9400 GT has a paltry 16.

Confusingly, most 9400 GTs are supplied with 512MB of RAM, while most 9500 GTs ship with 256MB of RAM. However, the RAM of a 9500 GT runs at double the frequency, so the GPU receives twice as much memory bandwidth. Neither card draws much power, so they don't have PCI-E power connectors. The 9400 GT doesn't support SLI, but you can SLI together two 9500 GTs.

The 9400 GT was woefully inadequate at gaming, struggling to provide a double-figure frame rate in most of our test games. You'd have more fun browsing through screenshots of Crysis Warhead on Flickr than trying to play the game on the 9400 GT. The 9500 GT is barely any better; it's nearly twice as fast as the 9400 GT, but still couldn't play any of our games smoothly. While both GPUs support Folding@home, they're extremely slow.

If you've ever been tempted to buy a £50 graphics card then the dismal performance results of the 9400 GT and 9500 GT should be a stark deterrent. Double your budget to £100 and you could buy a 9800 GT, which is an astonishing 450 per cent faster in Crysis Warhead.