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If you open your computer's case and take a look inside, can you tell just
what type of graphics card you have? Oh sure, you can break out the
owner's manual and find out and maybe there's a picture. But if you want
to fully understand your computer's video display, you'll want to indenfy
your graphics card and know which one you should purchase to upgrade.



Choosing the right video card for your system comes easy when you fully understand these components.There are numerous video cards
on the market but they fall under five categories.

Video cards can be categorized under budget, mid-range,high performance,workstation,and the special purpose cards.

This card is located inside the system unit and may be motherboard mounted on older systems. Recent systems have Video Cards inserted into
a AGP or Accelerated Graphics Port. but now the more popular and
faster PCI Express Graphics Card boost pc speed like never before.

Your computer's display system is composed of three components,the
CPU,the Display,which is the graphics card,and the Monitor.The CPU
creates the data that makes up the image.The Video Card translates
that data so that it can be displayed on the Monitor.

High End,or more expensive graphics cards contain up to 128MBs of RAM as compared to the 1 or 2 MBs or MegaBytes on the first graphics cards.Most low end video cards are mounted right onto the motherboard.

Video Cards were designed to plug into any ISA slot or the newer PCI
slot on the motherboard.In 1996 Intel introduced the new Accelerated
Graphics Port or the AGP Port.Instead of running half the Bus Speed with
the PCI slots,the AGP port provides a direck link between the video card
and the computer's Random
Access Memory or RAM.

This allows the bus speed to run full as compared to half.Look at your motherboard to see if you have the AGP Port installed.This port doubles the bandwidth of the video card.

3D ACCELERATORS

Your computer screen shows just two dimensions which is the height and width..To makes images look more realistic or 3demensional,some video
cards have 3D accelerators on board.

A 3D accelerator isn't necessary to show data or pictures on the monitor,but when that images must be changed many times in one second,such as
when you're playing large graphics games,you simply must have a Video Accelerator as compared to the Video Card.

ADDITIONAL VIDEO CARD FEATURES

When you check out the latest video cards,some now have special features
to really boost both performance and to cover special needs.

One such new feature is the DVI or the Digital Visual Interface which allow
you to connect the card to a LCD monitor and then it will accept digital signals rather than the analog signals of the conventional vards.

Should you desire,you can connect two monitors to the same video card when that card has the new Dual Output feature.

Want to watch TV while at your computer? Some video cards allow you to tune in to your favorite TV program. These are the video cards with TV Tuner added and may have the TIVO feature which allow you to record incoming TV programs to your hard drive.

THE 5 CATEGORY VIDEO CARDS

If you don't get into those graphic-intensive games,the budget video card may be what the doctor ordered for you.You can expect to pay about $70 dollars for these cards.And in most cases,they deliver decent video performance as well as DVD playback.

Mid Range cards are solid performers that will contain such features as S-Video connection and Video in/video out capture.These cards should suffice when it comes to creating movies.

High Performance cards are for those die-hard gamers which have neat features such as multiple outputs for analog,digital,and S-Video.When you
look at these cards,you will see heavy duty heat sinks mounted over the chip
to prevent the card from overheating.The ATI RADEON 8500 is an example of a high performance video card.

Workstation cards are for users of applications such as CAD,or Computer Aided Design and animation.Take a look at the ATI FireGL 8800 video card
as an example of a workstation card.

Special purpose cards have the name that keeps for themselves.They will have such special added features like television tuners and special audio output.

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======================
Article by: Otis F. Cooper
Learn how to save your computer
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Copyright 2002 Otis F. Cooper
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Otis F. Cooper
Softsale Software
5550 Pickering Ct.
Colorado Springs,Co 80911
allaboutpc@juno.com
http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com/
719-390-6935

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