SOMETIMES, you come to the realisation that your current computer just cannot cut the mustard any more.

You gaze enviously at the top new releases, such as Black And White or Hostile Waters, and realise that there is no way that these quite demanding programs will run on your particular beige box.

So do you have to go and spend another £1,000 to get a machine that can run fancier games? That's a lot of outlay just so you can play.

Another option is to upgrade, and there are two areas in which you can add to your computer's power without too heavy a burden on your pocket.

Graphics cards are probably one of the pieces of equipment that have dated most over the last couple of years. If you bought a PC just two years back, you might have an 8MB graphics card nestled in there. Now the shelves are full of 32MB and even 64MB cards, boasting four or eight times the capacity of your old card.

We tested two 32MB cards, the 3D Prophet II MX and the ELSA Gladiac MX, both of which come in at under £100 to buy. The cards were tested on a Pentium 400 machine with 128MB of RAM, and we used a variety of games as well as a benchmark program to figure out which had the cutting edge.

The ELSA Gladiac was first up. ELSA is one of the biggest names in the business these days, and its expertise shows on the Gladiac, which can conjure up a more than respectable 70 frames per second at higher rendering speeds. More importantly, it brought a fresh lease of life to the games we tested, with Black And White, Undying and Unreal Tournament all perking up significantly with the Gladiac humming away busily under the bonnet. There were no compatibility problems with the card, and it notched up a 3D mark of 3087 under our benchmark testing.

Next up came the 3D Prophet II. Now this card is a pleasure to behold. It trumped the Gladiac in just about every department, coming in with a 3D mark of 3213 and adding brightness and smoothness to the games we tested out.

Based around the GeForce 2 chip, which has rapidly become the most popular in graphics cards following the demise of the Voodoo cards, the Prophet is without doubt one of the top cards on the market and well worth your investment. For those wanting to watch DVDs on their machine, it also comes with the excellent Power DVD package (bear in mind you still need a DVD player). Both cards would pep up your machine in fine style, but the top mark goes to the Prophet. For those wanting to push the boat out a bit further, the Prophet has a big brother, the 3D Prophet II GTS Pro, a 64MB card, and everything the smaller card delivers is done in twice the style by the larger card.

SO HOW DO I INSTALL THEM THEN?

Installation of all these cards was simplicity itself. Peer at the back of your computer and see where the monitor is plugged into. That's your current graphics card. Turn the power off and disconnect everything, then pop open your machine. Your card will be in either a long thin holder or a slightly shorter one. The long thin slot is called a PCI slot, and will be the most common slot in your machine. The shorter slot is an AGP slot, which is needed for each of these cards.

If you don't have an AGP slot, opt for one of the still available range of Voodoo PCI cards, as there's little that can compare to them in terms of performance.

If you do, then proceed with removing your old graphics card and then place the new card in its required slot. Press it home firmly, and tighten the screw that fixes it to the back of the machine.

Then simply put the lid back on your computer, reconnect the cables and start up your machine. The machine should detect its new card and ask you for the software needed to get it running. Pop the CD in that comes with the card and follow the on-screen instructions. Within half an hour, you should have a machine that runs faster and smoother than you've ever seen it do before.

Happy gaming!