| All About Graphic Cards, Video Cards and Display Adapters |
| "The
newest computer graphic cards allow for smooth video, compressed video and on demand
movies.." |
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& Computer Peripherals Online "Build your own PC" |
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Graphic Cards are one of the most essential components of a computer system. The Video Card determines the graphics output on screen, smoothness of images, the complexity of images that can be produced, and will make or break a computer benchmark test. The main factors in determining the performance of benchmark of a graphics card is: Onboard memory, bus speed, & chip type. The leading manufacturers of Video Card chip technology is: ATI, Nvidia, Cirrus, Texas Instruments, Matrox, S3, and Intel. Out of this group, the top chips would be ATI and Nvidia. Many graphic card manufacturers will buy these "chips" OEM and build, market and sell their own cards. Some of the more well known manufacturers are 3D Labs, Abit, Asus, Chaintech, Connect3D, Daytona, EVGA, Gainward, Gigabyte, Hightech, Jaton, Leadtech, MSI, Pinnacle, PNY, Power Color, Sapphire, and XFX. |
There are many other small players. The majority of these cards are manufactured in China or Taiwan. Quality and performance will slightly differ. The customer service and software driver support is the true dividing line. Memory capacity may vary. I remember when video cards used to have 1MB of ram, back 7 years ago or so. Today, video cards supporting up to 128-256MB Ram is very common. The amount of ram will offload much of the work done by the main processor and enable the entire system to run faster, smoother, and better. If you're only doing basic business applications (Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop, etc..) all you need is about 8-16MB ram. It's when it comes to computer gameing that you need 32, 64, 128, and 256MB Ram. Graphic cards are becoming more powerful and heat dissipation is becoming a major issue. You'll see today's hottest cards sporting fans and major heatsinks. Today's increasing use of video, movies, and compression makes more powerful graphic cards necessary. |
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In our next issue we'll review the following topics: > We'll Take A Look at Some Legacy PCI Graphics Cards & Video Cards. What's the Best Around? > The New Sapphire ATI Radeon X800XT 256MB Blows away the competition! > XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB DDR 3 Video Card - The New Powerhouse for Gaming! > Dual Screen, Triple Screen, and Quad Screen Video Cards - We'll Review them all. |
