Overwhelmed by the jargon and specs? Choosing one of the best graphic cards for your computer can be a learning process. The purpose of this article is to make selecting one of the best graphic cards a lot quicker and easier, while making sure you get one of the best cards for your money.
Each user of a PC is unique and will be able to use one of the best graphic cards to do a variety of things. Here is a general categorization of applications by types:
General Purpose-Internet browsing, viewing picturs, word processing, etc.
3D Gaming-Games are the primary reason for the rapid development of the video card. Games are a feast for the eyes when using the best graphic cards.
Video Playback- The best graphic cards allow you to lighten the load on your computer's CPU with the GPU handling HD video decoding for problem free viewing of HDTV as well as stutter free DVD video playback.
Multimedia/TV-PCs are invading the living room and taking over the TV and DVD playing/recording duties. The best graphic cards have built in TV and HDTV tuners to make it possible.
Professional 2D- Business,commercial, and financial 2D applications with multi-display capabilities.
Professional 3D- 3D applications including MCAD, CAD, DCC and NLE for workstations.
GPU: ATI or NVIDIA?
The development of the GPU (graphic processing unit) has led to the explosive growth of the current video card market with new generations being released every six months. The GPU is an integrated circuit that controls 2D and 3D graphics as well as video. In doing so, it performs the calculations that determine the size, shape, color, and effects of the images displayed on your monitor. Two manufacturers pretty much control the GPU market between themselves, ATI and NVIDIA. These two companies manufacture the GPU chip sets needed to produce the best graphic cards.
NVIDIA uses different business partners (e.g., Leadtek, BFG, EVGA) to manufacture and market their graphic cards.
ATI both produces GPUs and manufactures video cards. ATI also use business partners to produce their video cards as needed. As a note of interest, ATI was recently aquired by AMD.
Interface: AGP or PCIe?
AGP (accelerated graphics portal) has been the mainstay of computer graphics for a number of years in the video card market. AGP 8X offers a maximum bandwidth of 2.1 GB/sec and is backwards compatible with AGP 4X. AGP video cards are only recommended for upgrading or replacing a card on a AGP motherboard. If you are building a computer from the ground up buy a PCIe graphic card. Remember, you will also have to makesure the motherboard is PCIe capable too. A point to note here is that neither ATI nor Nvidia support AGP with their dual video card technology (hint).
PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) - The wave of the future is PCI Express. PCI Express or PCIe for short is a bi-directional serial protocol. Each device located on the PCIe bus has its own “highway”. Each of these highways can be 1, 2, 4,8,16, or 32 lanes wide. Currently, the available PCIe video cards use 16 lanes of this highway, hence the 16X designation. Even so, the bandwidth available is much larger than what the AGP bus provides. The 16X PCIe video cards are capable of 8+ GB/sec throughput data speed.
SLI/Crossfire
Another advantage of the PCIe bus is the ability to run two video cards simultaneously. ATI calls their dual video configuration Crossfire. Nvidia has named their competing configuration SLI (scalable link interface). This greatly increases a computer’s frame rate (how many frames per second are shown on the monitor) and video bandwidth. That translates to faster game play, better video editing and smooth DVD playback! If you are building a computer or replacing your motherboard, the only way to go is with PCIe.
Video Card Specifications for the Best Graphic Cards
There is a lot of confusing terminology used in describing the features of the best graphic cards. Don’t be intimidated. Read on and find out which video card specifications and features are important.
Core Clock Speed- The core clock speed refers to the graphic card’s GPU. Much like a CPU, the GPU core speeds indicate how fast the GPU is performing calculations and is measured in millions of cycles per second or MHz. Generally, this will give you an indication of a GPUs performance within a given GPU series. Comparing Radeon-series GPU speeds to Geforce-series GPU speeds is not necessarily a reliable performance measurement. Suffice it to say, a higher GPU speed is better.
Memory Interface- This indicates the data connection bandwidth between the GPU and the onboard memory of the video card. High end cards generally have a 256 bit or higher connection while the budget cards have a 128 bit or lower connection. Let's go back to the highway analogy. The width of the memory interface can be understood in the same manner as the width of a highway. The wider it is the more traffic that can pass down it at any one time. In the same sense, the more bandwidth the memory interface has, the greater the amount of data that can be transferred between the memory and GPU. A larger memory interface results in a better video card.
Memory- Video cards may be equipped with different types of memory as well as different operating speeds and size. Memory is used to temporarily store graphic data. The larger and faster it is, the better the performance of the graphic card.
Typically, budget cards will have 128 MB of GDDR2 RAM. High end graphic cards will contain 256 MB or more of GDDR2,GDDR3, or GDDR4 RAM.
The best memory to have on your video card is GDDR3 or GDDR4 RAM. GDDR3 or GDDR4 is a very fast double-data rate memory for video applications. It requires less power and as a consequence generates less heat than normal DDR.
Pixel Pipelines-GPUs create images by processing pixels in parallel pipelines. The more of these pipelines a video card has the faster it can create images. Given that everything else is equal, a video card with 16 parallel pipelines is better than a video card with just 12 pipelines.
DirectX--Direct X is a collection of APIs (application program interfaces) developed by Microsoft to make it easier to develop games and eliminate software/hardware problems with Microsoft operating systems. Make sure the card you are considering supports the latest version DirectX. The current standard is DirectX 10 with DirectX 9.0c being the most common.
Shader Model 3.0-A composite naming of two different parts of Microsoft DirectX APIs. Pixel Shader 3.0 and Vertex Shader Model 3.0. These two APIs allow gaming developers to create more complex and realistic 3D environments than ever before. Make sure the video card you are considering supports Shader Model 3.0. Nvidia Geforce 6 and 7 series GPUs support Shader Model 3.0. ATI’s high end cards also offer this support.
I/O Ports Most video cards manufactured in the last few years offer multiple types of connectors for connecting CRTs, LCDs, and TVs to your computer.
DVI (digital visual interface) –An interface developed by Intel and is a standard for the connection of digital monitors such as a LCD. The digital output is a much higher quality than the VGA output which results in better video quality from your monitor.
VGA (video graphics array) - Type of connector (also called D-Sub)used to connect a monitor such as a CRT or a LCD to a computer. This term has really come to mean any analog connector or signal.
VIVO-Acronym that stands for Video In Video Out and is a multi-purpose port that produces and accepts a TV compatible analog video signal. VIVO equipped graphic cards can digitize analog signals in real time.
CATV- Acronym which stands for Cable Antenna Television and connects an antenna or cable to a video card with a TV tuner.
S-Video/Component/Composite-Ports that furnish video for TV
Dual Monitor Support
Enables a video card to output to two different monitors. Usually supported by a VGA and/or DVI connections. High end video cards will include two DVI ports. They can either be used with LCD monitors or VGA monitors with an adapter.
Conclusion
Choosing a video card is dependent on your budget and what you will be using it for. If you use your computer just for e-mail and internet surfing choose from ATI or Nvidia’s budget line of video cards. Computer enthusiasts who watch movies and play games will want to choose from either the Nvidia 7900GT or the ATIX1900 series of graphic cards.
Choosing one of the best graphic cards is surely one of the more important decisions for a computer user to make concerning a computer component. Spend as much money as your budget will allow to obtain one the best graphic cards. You will not be diappointed when you see the breath taking grahics they produce.
