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Video Card Buying Guide Table of contents
What does a video card do for me?
The video card is responsible for delivering all a computer’s hard work and resultant output to a connected display/monitor. When you play 3D video games, the video card is hard at work in the background rendering vivid 3D scenes and effects. In fact, all the text and pictures you see are processed by the video card, including the visualization effects that are provided by media player software. Without the video card, you wouldn’t know what your computer is doing and you most likely won’t be able to enjoy any of the fun that your computer can provide!
The applications that the video card can do are multiplex. In other words, different users will be able to use the video card to do different things. We can categorize the applications into the following types: General purpose 2D General-purpose 2D applications include web surfing, word processing, and picture viewing. Such applications are widely used by home and office users and do not have any special requirements for video cards.
3D gaming 3D games have been the driving force behind the video card industry’s phenomenally fast-paced growth. The main difference between each new generation of video card and their predecessors is typically that newer products offer better performance and are equipped with more advanced features to meet the requirements of existing or future 3D games. 3D games are so dazzlingly attractive these days that many users treat their computers as game consoles.
Video playback The latest video card products add not only new features for a better 3D game experience, but also features that cater to advanced video requirements, which, for example, include hardware acceleration for High-Definition video decoding. Without the help of the video card, the CPU would have a very tough time playing High-Definition video and the result could be heavy frame skipping.
Multimedia/TV PCs are rapidly replacing the TV and VCR/DVD player as the multimedia hubs of our living rooms through the help of multimedia video cards. Their built in TV and HDTV tuners plus video in/out functions mean you can watch TV and even HDTV; record and edit video; as well as play movies from a variety of formats all from the convenience of your personal computer.
Professional 2D Professional 2D applications include general purpose business and corporate applications and financial trading applications. Generally, professional 2D applications require multi-display capabilities from the video cards.
Professional 3D Professional 3D applications include Mechanical Computer-Aided Design (MCAD), Digital Content Creation (DCC), Non-Linear Video Editing (NLE), and Visualization Applications. To run professional 3D application smoothly, video cards need to be specifically optimized on both the hardware design and driver programming fronts.
Summary: For the average user and gamer, general purpose 2D, 3D gaming, video playback and MultiMedia/TV make up the bulk of the applications used on desktop PC, whereas professional users will typically run professional 2D and 3D applications on a workstation. What do I need to consider before purchasing a video card? Video card improvements have been moving along at breakneck speed for more than five years. Nowadays we can expect a new generation of video cards to replace the old within 3-6 months. There are also a great number of models on the market and in the same market segment with similar pricing. It certainly can make buying video cards a daunting task. This section is designed to help you get a handle on key video card specifications, and should hopefully make finding the right card for you an easier process. GPU The GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) is the core of the video card - it determines what the video card can do and how well the card will perform. The development of the GPU has lead directly to the fast-paced growth of the video card. At present, there are two GPU manufacturers that stand out from the rest: NVIDIA and ATI (acquired by AMD). Some other manufacturers, such as S3 and XGI are working hard to keep up with the Big 2 in the desktop PC market, while Matrox is devoted to the workstation market (especially in professional 2D field). Both ATI and NVIDIA have developed their own lineup of GPU products designed for all kinds of applications covering general purpose 2D, 3D game and video playback. The NVIDIA GeForce series and ATI Radeon series GPU, for example are represented by the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX and ATI Radeon X1900 XTX respectively in this domain. For professional 2D applications NVIDIA has the Quadro NVS series and ATI its FireMV series; while for professional 3D applications there are the NVIDIA Quadro FX and ATI FireGL series products. All GPU series contain several models to cover each market segment, and we can generally expect higher priced items to provide higher levels of performance. For more detailed information about NVIDIA and ATI GPU products, please refer to the following guides: NVIDIA Desktop GPU Tour ATI Desktop GPU Tour
Memory Working closely with the GPU is memory, which is the second most important factor determining the performance of a video card. Memory is used to store graphics data temporarily and the faster and larger it is, the better the maximum performance of the video card. Memory clock, type (e.g. DDR, GDDR2, GDDR3 and GDDR4), and the width of the memory interface are all key factors that affect each other. The type of memory installed correlates directly to a certain memory clock range - for example, the maximum clock of DDR memory is around 700MHz, while GDDR2 memory can support around 800MHz, GDDR3 will easily exceed 1GHz (1000 MHz), and GDDR4 can reach or even exceed 2 GHz. A higher clock usually means better performance given a memory interface of equal width. The memory interface actually refers to the width of the memory interface, for which currently there are several common standards: 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit, and 256-bit for video cards. Some current flagship video cards support much wider memory interfaces. For example, the latest GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS are equipped with 384-bit and 320-bit memory interfaces respectively. The width of the memory interface can be understood in the same way as the width of a length of highway - the wider the highway is, the greater the traffic that can pass through at any one time. In the same sense, the wider the memory interface is, the greater the amount of data that can be transferred between the GPU and memory at a given clock speed.
Interface Interfaces, also known as the bus connector, act as the bridge between the video card and the motherboard. Currently, video card interfaces include the PCI, AGP and PCI Express standards. PCI has been used for a very long time but can still be found on a handful of video cards. The AGP interface was the replacement for PCI and has been developed over the years to encompass the AGP 1X, AGP 2X, AGP 4X, and AGP 8X interfaces. AGP 8X is the fastest and is downwards compatible with AGP 4X; while AGP 4X is downwards compatible with AGP 2X, and so on. Currently, AGP is being rapidly replaced by PCI Express as the latter provides higher bandwidth for future requirements. The PCI Express standard can be broken down into the PCI Express x1, x2, x4, x8, and x16 standards, with PCI Express x16 used mainly for video cards. Therefore, we recommend getting a PCI Express video card if you are contemplating building a new system from the ground up. However, if you are only upgrading your existing video card it becomes important to select the interface based on the interface sported by your motherboard as installation of your new video card becomes impossible without matching interfaces.
I/O ports The I/O ports are used to link your computer up with your display device. On a video card, you may find a combination of D-Sub, DVI, TV-out, VIVO, or CATV ports. The D-Sub port is for connections to analog CRT and LCD monitors, while DVI is used for display devices utilizing the DVI connector, such as LCD monitors and projectors. The S-Video, Composite, and Component ports are all classified as TV-out ports. VIVO means Video-In and Video-out, and is multi-purpose port. The CATV port connects to a CATV cable to receive TV signals, and is provided only by video cards equipped with a TV tuner. Generally, the D-Sub, DVI and TV-out are the most typically-used ports on contemporary video cards. Please see the following guide for more detailed information about I/O ports. Video Card I/O Ports and Interfaces
DirectX/OpenGL Both DirectX and OpenGL are the API (Application Programming Interface) mainly used for 3D applications. DirectX is widely used in 3D games and multimedia, and though OpenGL can also be used for games, such as Quake, Doom, etc, more applications applying OpenGL are professional 3D software. Currently, DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.0 are the mainstream standard recommended for video cards. SLI/CrossFire SLI and CrossFire are both video card array technologies - the former is developed by NVIDIA and the latter by rival ATI. If you select a video card supporting either technology, you can, for example, buy a second identical card (for SLI) or a CrossFire Edition card (for CrossFire) to boost the graphical performance by up to 100%. How do I relate my requirements with the key specifications?
If you feel familiar and comfortable enough with the key specifications we have mentioned above, you can then proceed with the selection process by using Newegg's powerful Advanced Search service. Otherwise, you can also refer to our recommendations below. General Purpose 2D GPU: ATI Radeon series or NVIDIA GeForce series
3D Gaming GPU: ATI Radeon X1000 series or above, NVIDIA GeForce 6 series or above
Video Playback GPU: ATI Radeon X1000 series or above, NVIDIA GeForce 6 series or above
MultiMedia/TV GPU: ATI Radeon X1000 series or above, NVIDIA GeForce 6 series or above
Professional 2D GPU: ATI FireMV series or NVIDIA Quadro NVS series
Professional 3D GPU: ATI FireGL series or NVIDIA Quadro FX series
The recommendations above can come in handy during your research and provides many models from which you can narrow your search down to a few products whose prices most closely meet your budget and requirement set. |
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