What to look for in a video card
What to look for in a video card The proper graphics card can
help speed up almost any system by taking the responsibility of
many visual functions, allowing the CPU to work more effectively
in other areas. Let's take a look at a few of the key features
to look for in a graphics card.
Most all graphics cards are based on an Nvidia or ATI Radeon
chip set. For the casual home or office user, any of today's
video cards are adequate. If you're just doing Excel
spreadsheets you might not need to spend $500 on a video card,
but if you have a 21" monitor and want to view that spreadsheet
at 1600 x 1200 with a high refresh rate, it may be worth the
investment. Where things start to change is on high end games,
that's where the Geforce and Radeon cards make the difference.
Memory Matters As with every other facet of computing, more is
always better. However, you don't need a 256MB card if you're
just going to be using Quickbooks. For most office applications,
a 32 or 64MB card is adequate. For gamers or those doing some
sort of video production work, a minimum of 128MB is
recommended, with a strong lean to 256. The more memory your
video card has, the higher the resolution, and the larger the
number of colors it can display.
Connectors and Interfaces A standard SVGA card is going to have
a single VGA connector. Higher end cards will have an S-Video
and a DVI connector as well. What this means is that you have to
pay attention to what type of monitor you have. DVI is all
digital, like HDTV. The S-Video can be used to output to your TV
for gaming on a larger screen.
Now a days, you will have either a PCI or an AGP slot for your
video card. AGP stands for Advanced Graphics Port and as you
might have guessed, means there are enhancements in performance
when using and AGP slot. If your current video card is built
into the motherboard, it is likely robbing the system of
valuable memory because the system RAM is shared with it. This
is another good reason to upgrade your video card.