Gigabyte's Maya II GV-R9700 PRO is the fastest performing graphics card in the main section of this group test, which comes as no great surprise since it uses ATI's Radeon 9700 PRO chip.

The Radeon 9700 PRO features a 0.15-micron core, 256-bit memory bus, 128MB of DDR memory, full Direct X 9.0 and AGP 8X support. Its core clocks at 325MHz while the memory runs at a staggering 620MHz (310MHz DDR). Everything about this card screams 'speed'.

Gigabyte has followed the layout and the design of the standard ATI 9700PRO reference boards with one exception. Instead of the boring black cooler of the reference board, Gigabyte use its own gold coloured design, and has also added gold coloured heatsinks to the Samsung memory chips (but for some strange reason only on the top of the board; the ones on the rear are left uncovered).

With a red PCB and snazzy gold coloured cooling kit, the GV-R9700 PRO stands out from the growing crowd of me-too boards. Trust us, to many people this really matters.

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Because the power-hungry Radeon 9700 PRO chip needs extra grunt for its 110 million transistors, Gigabyte supplies the external Molex splitter power cable needed, something that not all card suppliers include.

The back plate holds the usual 15-pin VGA, DVI-I and S-Video connectors. Dual display is possible with the Maya II GV-R9700 PRO and to this end it comes with a DVI-I adapter and ATI's HydraVision. The latter is monitor management software which gives a user-friendly interface for setting up multiple monitors.

Gigabyte provides a large bundle of goodies with the Maya II GV-R9700 PRO. Aside from the driver CD, which also includes an overclocking tool, you get Composite and S-Video to Composite cables, CyberLink PowerDVD 4XP (one of the best DVD playback software packages available) and four full games; Serious Sam, Heavy Metal FAKK 2, Rune and Motocross Mania.