For those of you who are wondering “what to know when choosing video card?” or “how do I choose a video card?” we introduce you what you should take into account and how to make the best choice when buying a video card. Video card, also known as graphics accelerator, is a riser card which has as basic function to generate the image to be displayed on the monitor. Some video cards offer additional features, such as video capture, encoding and decoding video, FireWire, TV tuner, TV OUT, or the possibility of coupling multiple monitors.
Let’s talk a bit about integrated video card with shared memory. When you want to purchase a new system is very important to establish what is going to use it, because if you use it to surf the web, music, messaging, movies, games with poor graphics, an integrated video card on the motherboard, is sufficient. So you can save between $ 30-60 (or more). The integrated video card disadvantage is that it uses system RAM (“split” – shared) as memory video. Even so in enough cases, an integrated video card is recommended. While integrators allow “sharing” of RAM memory (which will be divided between video and system) for a video card of 256 MB or even 512 MB, we recommend you to use a maximum of 128 MB (for some chips, even 64 MB are enough) . You can test various configurations, but 128 + MB of memory helps to higher resolution for the processing ability of integrated graphics unit. So it is not advisable.
Nvidia graphics card
Talking about dedicated video card, if you are going to use the computer for gaming with advanced graphics, video processing, graphics editing (arguably), 3D modeling, and other applications that require intensively the video card, then it is advisable to opt for a dedicated video card. In this case, it is better to target and depending on the budget, the remaining components of the computer (for a balanced configuration), otherwise the remaining components, such as a slow CPU, insufficient RAM or slow, could stop the video card and you won’t use it at its maximum performance.
Memory chips on motherboard
When choosing a video card you should be careful to many things. First of all, you should be careful to interface with the motherboard (AGP, PCI, PCI-Express, PCI-Express 2.0). You should select the interface so that the video card to be compatible with the motherboard, otherwise you likely will not fit in the slot. Interface is not so important, especially that now we find cards mostly on PCI Express, but we passed it first to emphasize the importance of compatibility between the video card and motherboard. Don’t forget about the model/ GPU series (Graphic processing unit) – the video card CPU. What’s good to know, is that regardless of manufacturer, two plates with the same GPU will behave almost the same. Less if integrators grow certain parameters beyond the limit recommended by the manufacturers. But the differences are not very large. Pixel Pipelines are the pixel processing units of the GPU, and more they are, much more pixels can be processed in parallel. Video memory frequency and type (GDDR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is also very important. Video memory frequency greatly influences the video card performance, and is more important than video memory quantity. It’s good to know that for GDDR1, the frequency reaches up to 400 MHz frequency, GDDR2 up to 800MHz, GDDR3 and GDDR4 –1400-1800 MHz, GDDR5 UP to 3600-3900 MHz. Overclockers are playing the most on memory frequency.
Bandwidth bus (BUS) (64, 128, 256 bit) is another thing that should be taken into account. The bigger the better, because the data transfer will be fixed faster between GPU and memory. GPU frequency affects significantly the video card performance, but can not be varied greatly. The amount of video memory is sometimes a marketing tool, customers being “tricked” to buy memory, although it does not help with anything. The amount of memory ends up being important at high resolutions, so regarding cards that have a GPU capable of framerate (number of frames per second) decent at high resolutions. Talking about cheap motherboards, excess RAM is unnecessary. As inefficient is also Turbo Cache technology, which is a “sharing” similar to that of the integrated video card, only that video card dedicated comes with a small amount of video memory, which can be expanded in the system (RAM).
The cooling system may be passive or active.
Passive system consists of a large radiator, this cooling system advantage is that it produces no noise, but at the cost of GPU heating close to the maximum upper limit. Overclocking is contraindicated for passive cooling, less if you add a cooler to cool the radiator, turning the cooling in an active one. Cooling system has both a radiator (lower than for passive cooling), cooled by a fan. The average temperature that GPU is maintained is much smaller than for passive cooling, but this system produces noise (which can sometimes be reduced by using a monitoring application and hardware control).
Direct-X version is basically a collection of API, developed by Microsoft to provide software developers access to low-level functions of the hardware. As an idea, the more recent as better. Shader Model refers to some sets of instructions (Vertex, Geometry, Pixel) used by OpenGL and Direct3D that facilitates the use of graphics effects. Also, as more recent is the version as better. Pay attention to interface with display: DVI, VGA (D-IN), TV-Out (S-Video, RCA) and to numbers of monitors that can be connection to video card. Support for compression, video decompression (MPEG HD) releases the CPU compression and load video files decompression system. The VIVO support is useful to analogue signal digit in real time. If you want to use more video cards on one system, you must pay attention to the interconnect ability in Crossfire (ATI) or SLI (nVidia).
Some of these specifications can be found on the online shops websites, but we recommend you to get well informed also reading manufacturers sites and also pay attention to what support (drivers, manuals, Firmware) are offered. Also, boards can be a good source of information. A trick you can do when purchasing a new system is to choose a motherboard with integrated video card, will that shortly to purchase a dedicated video card. That is if you have a limited budget when purchasing the system.
