Everything You Need to Know About Video Cards

First off, you need to buy a video card. This involves a lot of confusing model numbers. If you've shopped around then you've probably seen a lot of 8600GT and X1800 and so on and so forth. There are 2 main manufacturers of video cards, Ati and nVidia. Lately nVidia has been making better video cards than Ati, and they cost less as well. There are a couple different distributors on each side. The way it works is nVidia or Ati will come up with a design for a video card, and then they will send the schematics and GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) to the different distributors, who will make the cards. That is why even though say, a card made by EVGA is the same model as a card made by XFX, the XFX card may look completley different.

Here is a list of Ati and nVidia distributors, as well as a breif description of each.

Ati nVidia

• MSI
• PNY
• HIS
• Sparkle
• Ati
• XFX
• EVGA
• Foxconn
• MSI
• Gigabyte

All of these are good brands to buy. Ati on the Ati side, as well as the others have excellent products and customer support. All Nvidia brands listed are good, Foxconn is a newer company that shows promise. XFX makes the best cards, but has horrible customer support. A good solid brand on the nVidia side is eVGA (also the biggest).

Nvidia cards follow different architectures depending on the version of DirectX that was cureent when they were released. For example, an 8600 card and a 7600 card may be almost the same, but the 7600 runs on the older DX9 architecture, and the 8600 runs on the DX10 architecture. This is a good guide to nVidia card models based on what you'll use them for.

• Home use - FX5200, 5300, 5600, 6100
• Workstation - Quadro 440, Quadro NVS 55
• Gaming- 6800, 7300GT, 7600GS, 7600GT, 7800GT/GS, 7900GT/GS, 8600GT, 8500
• High-End Workstation - Quadro FX Series, Quadro FX 4600, Quadro FX 4500
• Ultimate Gaming - 7950GT, 8800GT, 8800GTS, 8800GTX, 8800 Ultimate

Ati cards follow much the same pattern. They run a little pricier and tend to be of equivalent quality. If you find a good deal on an Ati card, get it. In general, though, I would stick to nVidia.

• Home use - Radeon 9250, Radeon 9550
• Workstation - FireGL V3100, FireMV 2200, FireGL V3300, FireGL V3400
• Gaming - X1300 pro, X1600 pro, X1650 pro, X1950 Pro
• High-End Workstation - FireMV 2400, FireGL V5200, FireGL X3, FireGL V7300, FireGL V7350
• Ultimate Gaming - Radeon HD 2900XT

You may be wondering, what's the difference between a gaming and a workstation card? Well, gaming cards are designed to handle everything that you would come across in a game; things like rendering, physics, numbers of polygons, etc. Workstation cards are made to help the CPU by handling many operations simultaneously. Workstation cards can handle many displays and many mathmatic calculations.

What about SLi and Crossfire then? Well, both are technologies used to run 2 or more video cards at once through the PCI-Express slot located on your motherboard. Both double your cards power. SLi is made for nVidia cards and Ati has Crossfire.

There are three different busses that your video card can run through. The first is a PCI-E x16 bus. This is characterized by being very thin and is usually either green or white, though it has a couple other colors, and having a nub to hold in your vieo card. There is usually 1-2 of these busses on your motherboard. The second is AGP 8x. AGP 8x slots are usually brown and bulky with little nubs on the end to hold in your graphics card. The last is PCI. Almost every motherboard built in the past 7 years has had at least 1 PCI slot. PCI slots are white and the same width as AGP slots. PCI slots have no nubs to hold in a graphics card. Make sure you get the correct card for your motherboard because they are not interchangeable.

Installing the card is simple enough, I can show it in 5 simple steps:

1. Open your case, touch an unpainted metal surface to prevent static discharge which can harm your computer. If at all possible, don't work on a carpet.
2. Remove your current Video Card (If applicable).
3. Place the new Video card in the approproate slot. Fasten onto the case in the back.
4. Replace cover on your computer. And hook up monitor to the new video card.
5. Boot up and install the driver disc that came with the video card. If there was none then download the drivers from either Ati or nVidia's website.

Well, I think I covered everything that needs to be covered. Have fun!