| Introduction | What To Look For |
| History | Shopping for a Video Card |
| What Does The Video Card Do? | Links |
| Slot Types |
The video card (aka graphics adapter or video adapter) is a card that fits in the 16x PCI-E (Peripheral Component Interconnect — Express) slot (or the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot or one of the PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slots in older computers) that generates the image that appears on the screen.
The image is made of dots called pixels. For example, on a 17" monitor the image might be 1024 dots wide by 768 deep. There are thus 786,432 pixels. People with 21 inch monitors may have an image 1280 × 1024 pixels. The smallest monitors might support only 640 × 480 pixels. About 70 times a second, the graphics adapter sends the entire picture, dot by dot, to the screen. For high resolution colour, inside the video graphics adapter, there are three numbers for each dot. One tells how red the dot is, a number from 0 for no red, to 255 for very red, one tells how green it is and one how blue. 0,0,0 is black. 255,255,255 is white. 255,0,0 is bright red. 0,255,0 is bright green. 0,128,0 is dark green. 0,255,255 is bright yellow. The computer changes the picture by manipulating the numbers associated with each pixel. This scheme gives over 16 million colours. Low res colour might have only one number 0 to 15 associated with each pixel. This works much faster and requires less hidden RAM (Random Access Memory) on the video card, but allows only 16 different colours on the screen at once. A compromise might be 256 or 65,536 different colours. Hardware has become so cheap that 16 million colours is pretty well standard now.
Most of the power in today’s video cards is used for gaming, especially 3D games. 70 times a second, the CPU (Central Processing Unit) builds a mathematical wire frame model of the scene and the video card fills in the triangles with colour, shading and texture. The video card processing power is also used to unpack the compression when you view movies or YouTubes. For text, the video card prepares raster model letters in various sizes from the font outlines, like tiny anti-aliased images for each of the glyphs. Then to draw text, it copies the exemplar letters to the spot in video memory which corresponds to the desired spot on the screen. This takes relatively little computing power. When you scroll, the video card repeatedly moves the entire block of rendered letters in RAM to a spot corresponding to a slightly higher position on the screen. If the video card is fast enough, the text appears to move smoothly without jerks.
In addition to all this, 70 times a second, the card sends the complete picture to the monitor.
Most graphics cards today go into a special PCI-Express-16 aka PCI-E slot. Older motherboards use an AGP slot. Modern graphics cards use a digital DVI-D (Digital Video Interface — Data) external connector or an integrated analog-digital DVI-I (Digital Video Interface — Integrated) external connector. High end ones use HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) connectors.
Sometimes the video adapter in integrated into the motherboard. Add on cards cost from to . Gamers can spend even more on the video card than they do on the computer. Features to look for:
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| analog VGA (Video Graphics Adapter) | digital DVI-D | integrated DVI-I | HDMI for HDTV (High Definition Television) |
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recommend electronic⇒ZOTAC GeForce GT 730 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| asin | B00R5UW038 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Low Profile, 4GB 64-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 (x8 lanes) Graphics Card. Model ZT-71115-20L. This card is similar to the discontinued model 640 I use myself. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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recommend electronic⇒Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 6850 Video Card | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| asin | B0047ZGIUK | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 1 gig of DDR-5 RAM, Uses a PCI-E 2.0 16-bit slot. It has two DVI outputs and HDMI. The RAMDAC GPU runs at 775 MHz. Accesses RAM 256 bits at a pop. Supports DirectX 11 and Windows 7/8. 2560 × 1600. 150 watts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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recommend electronic⇒ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1060 AMP Edition, ZT-P10600B-10M | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| asin | B01I5O5AP2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This card was released 2016-07-13. For months there has been talk of nothing else on the technical boards. People were very excited about it. Basically it brings the power of video cards costing thousands of dollars into the range of the hobbyist. It chews up 120 watts. This is considerably less that other cards of this power, but it is still a huge drain. It takes up two adjacent PCI Express 3.0 slots. The card comes with two powerful fans that shut down the chip if a fan fails. It has and impressive 6 Gb of 8 Ghz DDR5 RAM. It has 1280 Cuda cores. It has 3 × DisplayPort 1.4, 1 × HDMI 2.0 and 1 × Dual-link DVI. Can drive four monitors. Supports Microsoft DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5 and OpenCL. There is a cheaper mini version with less skookum fans. It has three bigger brothers, the 1070, the 1080 and the Titan. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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recommend electronic⇒ZOTAC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| asin | B009AEL3JO | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 2GB GDDR5 2DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card ZT-60901-10M. PCI Exress 16 version 3. Uses the NVidia GeForce chip set. Zotac is a German company that makes PCs, motherboards and videocards. Can connect to HDTV. Dual silent fans. The name puts me off. I think of Adam Sandler and his character, Zohan Dvir. Zotac sounds like the name of the arch villain in a video game or a stomach remedy. It has a 192-bit path to memory. 960 shaders, 80 texturing units, 24 rasterising units. 140 watts (lower power than the competition). Max resolution 3840 × 2160. There are 3 sub models, with slightly different clock frequencies. The 903 (980 Mhz) is slowest, then the 901 (993 MHz), then the fastest, the 902 (1046 Mhz). Specs. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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recommend electronic⇒NVIDIA Quadro 6000 VCQ6000-PB by PNY premium video card | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| asin | B0044XUD1U | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Has 448 Cuda processing cores. Has 6 Gig of GDDR3 RAM. It accesses ECS memory 512 bits at a pop. DVI-I connectors. Takes up two PCI Express gen 2 × 16 slots. Supports Stereo OpenGL 4.1, DirectX 11.0, CUDA and OpenCL. It consumes a whopping 204 watts. Very expensive. Specs no longer posted on the PNY website. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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recommend electronic⇒PNY 6000 Quadra VCQK6000 PCI-Express x16 12Gb 384bit GDDR5 graphics card | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| asin | B00E920GAO | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Ultra expensive, top of the line PNY video card. 4096 × 2160 resolution. DVI-I,DVI-D and 3-pin 3D Stereo outputs, ships with DP-DVI-D(SL) and a DVI-VGA adapter, stereo connector bracket and 6 pin PSU cable. It has 2880 Cuda cores, 12 GB GDDR5 memomy, Memory Bandwidth 288 GB/s, supports 4 displays. 225 Watts (ouch). Specs. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Crossfire is a technique for allowing up to four video cards to work in a single machine either to control multiple monitors or to speed up response.
When you buy a monitor or video card, check which sorts of connector and cable they use. You need a match and you need a cable which could cost upward of extra.
I was blown away when my Samsung monitor came with three cables: for VGA, DVI-D and HDMI.
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