This is potentially the most confusing aspect of your machine, yet also one of the most important, so give it some thought.

The SpaceCube has onboard graphics which are perfectly acceptable for web browsing, word processing and the like. They use main system memory (16/32/64/128Mb) leaving less room for other things, and a small hit on overall performance, but unless you are comparing and contrasting, you probably wouldn't notice.

Adding an extra graphics card opens up a number of additional options, and removes the overhead caused by the on-board graphics. This means that your whole system will be faster. Of course, games and graphics/video/multimedia applications will benefit most, but don't dismiss graphics cards as "just for games".

A common mistake is to judge graphics cards purely on the amount of memory they offer - after all, a 64Mb card is clearly inferior to 128Mb, right? In many cases the answer is "no" as such large sizes aren't made use of. In fact, it's the chip at the heart of the card that determines how well the card performs, and what features it offers. 128Mb on a slow chip will be slower than a good chip with 64Mb.

Now, one thing the more expensive (75ukp+) graphics boards offer is a DVI digital output. This allows you to connect to DVI-equipped (good/pro) LCD screens and maintain a digital signal throughout. This means sharper pictures, no geometrical distortions, and purer colour rendering. Graphics cards also offer TV-out facilities allowing you to display the picture on a TV set, perhaps for watching movies.

The on-board Geforce4Mx provides adequate performance. It offers TV out.

The Radeon 9000Pro offers much better performance than the onboard Geforce4Mx (about 60% faster) and also supports more advanced graphics technologies for more special effects etc. This includes a DVI output. It's a great choice.

The Geforce 4Ti card offers similar features to the Radeon 9000Pro but runs about 35% faster again. Current games are designed to run well on this. Again, it offers DVI/TV etc.

Both the Radeon 9500Pro and 9700Pro offer the very latest DirectX9 hardware feature support. They outperform the cheaper cards, and features like "full scene antialiasing" perform speedily, smoothing out jagged edges on 3D scenes. DirectX9 isn't used by (m)any current games, though, so these cards are about future-proofing. Of course, this isn't the issue for many people - these cards will handle pretty much anything you can throw at them right now, and will give you a great all-round home system.

Note that graphics card upgrades are cheaper for high spec SpaceCubes than for low spec spacecubes, as using a separate graphics card gives us more flexibility in choosing compatible memory.