How to Buy a Graphic Card For Your Computer

Feb.18, 2008 in Guides, Hardware

Choosing a video card is one of the most compound challenges that the computer industry places before us. most people simply raise hands and take whatever offered to them by the dealer.There are, of course, all those gamers , graphic designers and 3D professionals , that recognize every component by his name and know to specify the exact data of tests of different executions. But when “regular” people go to buy new computer, or want to upgrade their video card, they in general find that it’s an impossible maze of data and professional terms.This article will not make you experts, this is impossible nor essential. What we will try to, is to pour a little light on this compound field, and to offer simple tools for the intelligent choice of the suitable product for you.

Card Vs. Onboard

“Video card” or “Graphics card”, is a nickname to the component that mediates between the computer and the screen, and changes the current of display data to the dynamic picture.In part of the cases we are talking about a card (Discrete GPU) a board that includes a designated chip and several other components, and is inserted into a PCI Express type slot (in new computers) or an AGP slot (in older computers). Although in many of the new computers there is a different solution : an Motherboard integrated graphics Chip (integrated GPU) that shares the ram of the computer.

Traditional, the first possibility is vital if your main use of the computer is games. A separate Graphics card, that arrives with a stronger chip and memory of its own,is able to handle more complex graphics with more success. Onboard graphics is a much cheaper solution which is enough for more conventional tasks.

Onboard accelerators are in constant development, and are capable of tackling missions that were to big for them in past years. In some cases they even come with dedicated RAM that prevents the usage of System Ram. Still, an integrated Graphics card is not enough

You don’t have to be a gamer to need strong graphic processing abilities. if you do some video editing you will need a strong graphics card, watching HD movies might also require a good graphics card. the technologies that support such activities are not available in integrated graphics cards. You won’t need a strong Graphic card if you use your computer to brush up some of the pictures you took with your digital camera, but if you are a Photography buff and the resolution of your pictures is high you might need a stronger Graphic processing unit. Finally we come to Vista, the latest OS from Microsoft. In order to enjoy Vista to the full you cant settle for an integrated Graphic chip.

What is Available

You can get Graphics cards for almost any price you imagine, 50$ to 1000$. The Gaming Graphics cards market is controlled by 2 products, Nvidia’s Geforce and ATI’s Radeon. however if you are more interested in 3D softwares or Photoshop use you can get the Nvidia Quadro or the ATI FireMV/FireGL.

if you are upgrading you old computer, remember to check that your computer is compatible with the new technology that you are going to buy. to do that you can install Sandra or PC Wizard and check out what your computer supports. for instance if you have a PCI-Express slot or an AGP one.

The memory on the Graphics card is very important if you are planning to make him sweat, its recommended to get at least 256MB. most new Graphics card have 512MB, and ofcourse, the faster the memory the better you have DDR, DDR2, GDDR3 and GDDR4, its all a matter of budget.

In order to create graphichs programmers use a “language” called DirectX (Vista also uses this “language” for its graphics) so you would want to get a Graphics card that supports at least DirectX 10 (Geforce 8000 series and Radeon HD 3000 Series).

If you a re going with one of the latest model of Graphics card you should verify that you Power supply unit is strong enough, a 300W PSU is not enough for the stronger cards and might result in instability of the system.

What can we find in the New Graphics Card Models:

PCI Express 2.0: The new slot version for the Graphics cards which allows twice the bandwidth as before, when buying a new computer check that the MotherBoard supports this
HDMI & DirectPort: The first is for transferring Video in DVI quality which is supported by most new cards. The second is a special output socket on the Graphics card that provides double bandwidth.
SLI/CrossFire: Connecting 2-4 Graphics Cards to one Motherboard so the load is divided between 2-4 cards and not just one.
ATI Hybrid Graphics: A new feature from ATI the allows connecting a Graphics Card along side a onboard Graphics chip so you don’t loose the processing power ( even if smaller) of the onboard chip when you connect a separate Graphics Card.
PureVideo HD / UVD: Advanced video decoding, allows the decoding of VC-1 and H.264 Video in HD to get a quality picture and remove the load off the processor.

What & When To Buy

There are some things you don’t want to give up when buying a new Graphics Card, if you want it to last and be compatible with new games you would want it to have at east 256MB of RAM and to support DirectX 10. The top products today are the GeForce 8000 series and the Radeon HD 3000 series. you can always check Tom’s Hardware for a comparison table, which updates from time to time. ATI has released the HD 3870 X2 which is around 50$, off course you can go as high as 500$ for your Graphics Card, but that’s a question of budget. My recommendation is to wait till the middle of the year when Nvidia will release its new models and then we will see a price drop in the models we have now.

Enjoy

Amit