Video Cards

Integrated Video Cards Integrated video cards are built into the motherboard. Notice the two ports, the graphic output they offer is not that powerful.

Video Cards A video card is used to process images so they can be displayed on your monitor. Good video cards can make a big difference in the quality of your graphics, so this is particularly important if you play games or work with photography and video.

What is a Video Card? Video card output can go to anything from a monitor to one of those digital billboard signs that changes every few seconds.

Functions of Video Cards For relatively low-end computer systems, the ability to create output images are sometimes integrated into the motherboard or CPU. This is done as a cost saving measure by the manufacturer.

HD Content If you want to watch HD movies or play games on your computer, a dedicated video card greatly improves the quality of the graphics. Without a quality video card, some games or other graphic intensive applications may not work at all.

In-game example of Graphics

Video Card For serious gamers, a high quality video card might be the most important part of your computer gaming system. For rendering 3-D graphics in particular, a high quality video card is a must. The tradeoff is, the better the card, the more expensive it is.

Completely Digital Car

GPUs A stand alone video card is a printed circuit board much like the motherboard. It contains its own type of processing unit called a “GPU” and a series of memory chips like RAM GPU stands for Graphical Processing Unit

GPU 2 Theses video card components essentially take the working load off the motherboard's CPU and memory to process images/videos. This shifting of the workload allows the motherboard’s CPU and memory to do other things, which makes the computer work faster.

Video Card

Motherboard Connection A video card connects to the motherboard of a computer system using an expansion slot. This connection is usually in either a Accelerated Graphics Port Connection (AGP) or a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) connection.

Slot Examples

Higher End Components As we talked about, high performance video cards generate a lot of heat. Video cards therefore need to employ heat sinks, which consist of metal strips to distribute the heat evenly and dissipate the heat to the surrounding air.

Heat Sinks The Video Card heat sink is often located right on top of the GPU. Just like on the motherboard’s CPU a fan is sometimes added for additional cooling.

Heat sink + Fan The video card in the photograph below includes both a heat sink on top of the GPU (the metal stripes) as well as a large fan in a plastic casing

Heavy Duty Cooling Sometimes one fan isn't enough cooling, when in doubt a video card manufacturer just add more fans

Connectors Whatever your video card is there are a series of different connectors that allow you to connect your computer to different devices. TV’s in recent years have been used as substitute monitors due to their lower cost and increased size. This has led to certain TV compatible connectors being included on some video cards.

Connector Types

VIDEO GRAPHICS ARRAY Despite being introduced in the 1980’s the “Blue” VGA connector is commonly found on many production monitors and video cards. VGA = Video Graphics Array

VGA High Definition? While the VGA transmission bandwidth is good enough to support resolutions higher than 1080p, there can be picture quality issues depending on cable quality and length. When compared to an image using a DVI or HDMI connection, the lower quality can be extremely visible

Digital Visual Interface DVI connectors were designed to replace/live along side the aging VGA connection method. Created in the late 1990’s to improve the speed and quality of VGA type connections.

High-Definition Multimedia Interface HDMI was created by a group of several consumer electronic companies including Sony. They got together to create a interface cable that was to be better in all ways to what was currently being used to transfer audio and video signals. 3

HDMI There are many different versions of HDMI connectors, each version can be used for different applications including standard, enhanced, high definition, and 3D video signals 4

High End Part 2 While many regular video cards only provide a single connection to a typical computer monitor, some high-end Video Cards include many different connection points so that multiple computer monitors as well as a TV can all be connected at once.

Plugs a plenty…

Which video card is for you? For typical computer users, a basic video card will often be sufficient. Serious gamers and those working with design, photography or video-editing will benefit from investing in a high-end video card. Many high-end video cards also make it possible to connect to multiple monitors at the same time.

Frames Per Second The best video cards have a fast GPU and lots of memory. A good overall measurement of the quality of a video card is its frame rate, which is measured in frames per second (fps). The human eye can process around 25 fps, but fast-action games or movies require a frame rate of at least 60 fps to provide smooth transitions. 1

Choosing a Video Card There are two main companies that produce the chips and circuits found on almost every video card. Even if that card is assembled by another company

Understanding NVidia If you go to one of the NVidia websites about their cards: gpus You will see many cards with different model numbers.

The way to tell if a NVidia card is better or worse than other NVidia cards is by looking at the numbers. 1st digit indicates the series 2nd digit tells how powerful/fast the card is. (The higher 2 nd number = better card)

NVidia Card Options..

AMD video cards uses a similar numbering system to NVidia, but with more numbers. First Number: Series of the GPU Second Number: What family group of the Series Third Number: Tells how powerful/fast the card is. (The higher 3rd number = better card)

Understanding Just because a AMD card has a higher 1 st and 2 nd number doesn’t mean it’s the most powerful.

Which is better? The way to determine what card is truly better between the two companies, NVidia and AMD can be complicated and very confusing. If you want to get the most for your money, you’ll need to do some research.

Benchmarking. Video Cards are rated against each other based on how well they perform. This rating is called benchmarking Benchmarking isn't just done with video cards, but with all sorts of consumer goods.

The process… A game is selected and ran at a certain detail setting. The various cards are measured for how well they run at that high detail setting in the game. – Frames per second – How many shadows – Water Effects/Textures – Colors – 3-D depth

Battlefield 3 PC

Crisis 3 PC

Doubling Down Some video cards that are older and outmatched by other, newer video cards might not be so bad. Both companies have setups that allow 2 video cards to sit inside the same computer, and with special cables massively increase their performance.

AMD Crossfire Notice the Orange CROSS FIRE tags that connect the two video cards together

NVIDIA SLI Similar technology links these two NVidia Cards together.

Something to remember. Regardless of what type or brand of video card you want to have there are a few things you need to think about. Failure to think about the following can result in a computer that wont work.

Things to Consider Do you have enough space inside your computer case to fit whatever new video card you want? Do you have enough slots on your Motherboard to be able to plug in the card?

Things to Consider 2 Does your computer’s power supply have enough “juice” to power whatever new card you have? Does the video card you want have the plugs and ports you want so you can hook up all your stuff?

Wrap Up Thinking about all these things can be a daunting task, but considering the cost of a new video card its research that's needed to make sure you buy the right one that fits your needs.