Having a terrific graphics card isn't all about blasting aliens to kingdom come. A fast 3-D video card can speed up the display of digital video and even Windows.
What slot do you need?
Although today's video cards look like any other typical adapter cards, they actually fit in either of two types of motherboard slots:
- Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP): AGP cards for today's Athlon and Pentium computers use a dedicated AGP slot; no other adapter cards will fit into this slot. (Refer to your motherboard or PC manual to make sure that you have an AGP slot before you buy an AGP video card.) AGP video cards provide excellent performance, but they're slowly being replaced in the marketplace by PCI-Express cards.
- PCI-Express: PCI-Express video cards can fit only into a dedicated PCI-Express video card slot, so check your motherboard or PC manual to make sure that your machine will accept a PCI-Express video card. However, once you install a PCI-Express video card, you'll enjoy the fastest possible video performance.
Rate the performance of a particular card while you're shopping by checking on the box or the manufacturer's Web site for benchmark results that you can use to compare with other cards. Try the popular benchmark program 3DMark06. You can also find up-to-date reviews of the latest cards and video chipsets at Tom's Hardware .
Exploring the differences between chipsets
There really aren't any differences among chipsets, which are the separate Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) "brain" that powers today's top 3-D video cards. The two major players in the PC video card chipset battle are
- NVIDIA: The cutting-edge crew at NVIDIA has produced some of the fastest video cards for the PC in recent years, including the classics RIVA TNT and TNT2 as well as the GeForce series. The latest NVIDIA chipset, the NVIDIA GeForce 7, is awesome. In fact, very few games or 3-D applications on today's software market can actually push a GeForce 7 series card to its limit.
- ATI: ATI Technologies has been producing popular video chipsets for a decade now, including its Rage line. Typically, ATI video cards are somewhat cheaper than NVIDIA cards, and many motherboard manufacturers build ATI video hardware directly onto their products. ATI's Radeon X850-series chipset is a big winner with performance that even tops the latest GeForce 7 cards.
Other video card features that you'll want
Naturally, you can evaluate more than just chipsets and connectors when comparing video cards. Keep an eye out for these features and specifications while you shop.
- Onboard random access memory (RAM): Like your motherboard, your video card carries its own supply of memory. Today's cards typically include anywhere from 64-512MB of memory. Again, the general rule is to buy a card with as much onboard RAM as possible. More RAM equals higher resolutions with more colors onscreen.
- Driver and standards support: Any PC video card should fully support the Microsoft DirectX video standards - currently at DirectX 9.0. Gamers will also appreciate robust OpenGL support (an open video standard that's becoming very popular in 3-D action games). Support for these standards should be listed on the box.
- Maximum resolution: The higher the resolution that a card can produce, the more that your monitor can display at once - and not just in games, but documents, digital photographs, and your Windows desktop. Today's cards can reach truly epic resolutions, such as 2048 x 1536.
- Video capture and TV output: A card with these features can create digital video footage from an analog TV signal (that's the video capture part) and transfer the image that you see on your monitor to a TV, VCR, or camcorder (that's the TV output part). If you need to produce a VHS tape with images from your PC, or if you want to create video CDs or DVDs from your home movies on VHS tape, spend a little extra on a video capture/TV output card.
- TV tuner: A card with a built-in TV tuner can actually turn your PC into a TV set, including the ability to pause and replay programs on the fly (like how a TiVo unit works with a regular TV). You can use a traditional antenna or connect the card to your cable or satellite system.
- Multiple monitor support: Many of today's video cards allow you to connect two monitors to one card. You can either choose to see two separate desktops, or you can opt to make the two monitors into a seamless desktop. Imagine the size of your Windows workspace when it's spread across two displays!
- MPEG hardware support: Digital video is typically stored in MPEG, AVI, or MOV formats, with the most popular being the MPEG format. Without the compression that these video formats offer (which shrinks the digital video file in size), you'd never get a full-length movie on a single DVD. Although your PC can use software to encode (create a compressed MPEG file) and decode (read a compressed MPEG file) MPEG files on your hard drive or a DVD, a video card with built-in encoding and decoding features can really speed up the process. This hardware support is particularly valuable if you're going to do serious video editing on your PC because you'll cut down the amount of time required to save your movies to disk.
