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Buying Guide to Graphics Cards
By: Andrew Gates
The graphics card is a vital performance component of your
computer, particularly if you play 3D games, or work
with graphics and video content. The graphics card
sits in an expansion card slot in your PC and it is
specifically designed to process image data and
output it to your monitor, enabling you to see it. A
graphics card works by calculating how images
appear, particularly 3D images, and renders them to
the screen. 3D images and video images take a lot of
processing capacity, and many graphics processors
are complex, require fans to cool them and need
direct power supply. The graphics card consists of a
graphics processor, a memory chip for graphics
operations, and a RAMDAC for display output. It may
also include video capture, TV output and SLI and
other functions.
Graphics Cards
What are your needs?
The first decision you need to make is whether you
need a graphics card for handling 3D images or
whether you are simply requiring 2D image rendering.
For 2D requirements, you need only a low-cost
solution. In many cases, an integrated graphics
solution will suffice for 2D applications.
However with 3D graphics, the performance of the
graphics card will impact directly on the frame rate
and image quality of 3D programs and games. The
differences between the low and high-end cards can
be substantial, both in cost and performance.
Rendering 3D graphics is like lighting a stage, both
the geometry of the shapes in question and the
lighting of it need to be taken into account. The
geometry of an image calculates the parts of an
object that can and can't be seen, the position of
the eye and its perspective. The lighting is a
calculation of the direction of the light sources,
their intensities and the respective shadows that
occur. The second part to presenting a 3D image is
the rendering of colours and textures to the
surfaces of the objects, and modifying them
according to light and other factors.
Most modern graphics cards include a small microchip
called the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), which are
provide the algorithms and memory to process complex
images. They reduce the workload of the main CPU,
and provide faster processing. Different graphics
cards have different capabilities in terms of
processing power. They can render and refresh images
up to 60 or more times per second, calculate shadows
quickly, create image depth by rendering distant
objects at low resolution, modify surface textures
fluidly and eliminate pixilation.
What Specifications to Consider
Processor clock speed
This impacts on the rendering capability of the GRU.
The clock speed itself is not the critical factor.
Rather it is the per-clock performance of the
graphics processor, which is indicated by the number
of pixels it can process per clock cycle.
Memory size
This is the memory capacity that is used exclusively
for graphics operations, and can be as much as
512MB. The more demanding your graphics applications
are, the better you will be served with more memory
on your graphics card.
16-32M
64M
128M
256M
512M
640M and more
Memory bandwidth
One thing that can slow down 3D graphics performance
is the speed at which the computer delivers
information to the graphics processor. A higher
bandwidth means a faster data transfer, resulting in
faster rendering speeds.
Shader model
DirectX Shader Models allows developers control over
the appearance of an image as it is rendered on
screen, introducing visual effects like
multi-layered shadows, reflection and fog.
Fill rate
This is the speed at an image can be rendered or
"painted". This rate is specified in texels per
second, the number of 3D pixels that can be painted
per second. A texel is a pixel with depth (3D). The
fill rate comes from the combined performance of the
clock speed of the processor and the number of
pixels it can process per clock cycle, and will tell
you how quickly an image can be fully rendered on
screen.
Vertices/triangles
Graphics chips don't work on curves, rather they
process flat surfaces. A curve is created by
multiple flat planes arranged to look like a curve.
3D objects are created with multiple triangular
surfaces, sometimes hundreds or even thousands,
tessellated to represent the curves and angles of
the real world. 3D artists are concerned with the
number of polygons required to form a shape. There
are two different types of specification: vertices
per second (I.e., angles the triangles), and
triangles per second. To compare one measure with
the other, you have to take into account the fact
that adjacent triangles share vertices.
Anti-aliasing
A technique used to smooth images by reducing the
jagged stepping effect caused by diagonal lines and
square pixels. Different levels of anti-aliasing
have different effects on performance.
RAMDAC
The Random Access Memory Digital to Analogue
Converter takes the image data and converts it to a
format that your screen can use. A faster RAMDAC
means that the graphics card can support higher
output resolutions. Some cards have multiple RAMDACs
allowing that card to support multiple displays.
TV-out
Some graphics cards provide the option to connect a
television via either a composite (RCA) or S-Video
connector. TV Out
S-video Out
S-video In and S-video Out (VIVO)
YPbPr Connection for HDTV
DVI
Some graphics cards include a connector for DVI
monitors, handy because a lot of LCD screens support
DVI. DVI offers better image quality than the
standard VGA connector.
Dual-head
Dual-head is a term used when two monitors are used
side by side, stretching your desktop across both.
SLI (Scalable Link Interface.)
With SLI you can couple two graphics cards in your
computer, enabling each card to take half the
rendering thereby doubling the performance.
When considering your graphics card, it pays to
think about how much you need your computer to
process your graphics output. Using a high end
graphics card with a high pixels per clock rating,
large memory, fast processor and other features
means that you can run the latest games efficiently,
or work in intensive graphics development.
Different Models
While there are many vendors of graphics cards,
there are actually only two major manufacturers of
chips for graphics cards. Nearly every graphics card
on the market features a chip manufactured by either
ATI or Nvidia. Cards using the same graphics chip
will perform roughly the same as each other.
However, even though they use the same chip, some
feature slightly higher clock speeds, as well as
manufacturer guaranteed overclocking-an even higher
clock speed than that specified. Other factors that
will influence your decision should include the
amount of memory a card has (128MB, 256MB, 512MB)
and its additional features, such as TV-Out and
dual-screen support.
Author Bio
Andrew Gates is a writer for comparison online
shopping service - http://www.myshopping.com.au ,
MyShopping.com.au helps you compare video cards and
buy online from top-rated online stores.
Use the search facilities at Myshopping.com.au to
compare the features, prices and vendors of graphics
cards.
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