Graphics Card

[Brown]

Anybody know any good graphics cards ?

[Gixer]

How much do you have to spend? Also do you have an AGP port or a PCI port to put it in?

[flyflyflyaway]

It really depends what you want to do with it. Here's what 'PC Mechanic' says, hope it helps!

PS: Im gonna have to put this into two or three parts

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Buying a Graphics Card  

A Few Basics
When playing games, frame rate is most important. A high frame rate, measured in frames
per second (FPS) is the number of still screens that is displayed on the computer per
second. The more still screens per second, the smoother the computer animation would
be. A minimum of 25 FPS is needed to play games like Counterstrike or America's Army.
50 to 60 FPS is the ideal range to play such games. Anything more than 60 and your eyes
and brain would not be able to tell any difference. Then why do people want graphic
cards which can churn out 150 FPS? The reason lies in that with a high frame rate,
users can turn on quality features (discussed in another article) to make the game look
more detailed and clear. After all, who likes playing a game with a blurry screen?

There are 4 main players in the graphics card market. NVIDIA and ATI are two major
player while SiS and Matrox are the minor players.

NVIDIA currently sells its mainstream GeForce FX set of cards, and has now released the
new 6000 series cards. The FX series ranges from the GeForce FX 5200 all the way to the
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, and the 6000 series has the (in order of performance) 6800,
6800Pro, 6800 GT, and 6800 ultra. NVIDIA's strong point is their driver support. A
dedicated group of software programmers churn out new driver updates every month or so,
giving extra performance to their cards.

ATI sells mainly its Radeon range of graphic cards, from the Radeon 9000 to the Radeon
9800 XT, with the next generation graphics cards being the X800 pro and X800 XT
platinum edition (PE). ATI used to play second fiddle to NVIDIA, however in these
couple of years, ATI has caught up a fair bit with NVIDIA and now both offer great
performing cards at competitive prices.

Matrox used to be a big player in the market in the past, but has never been able to
catch up with its big brothers ATI and NVIDIA of age. Matrox cards are now mainly used
for workstations for 3-D designing. Its specialty in gaming is “surround-gaming� which
has yet to hit it big in the gaming community. Only a few games support this
technology.

SiS is a new entrant to the graphic cards market. It mainly manufacturers cards based
on its Xabre chipsets. Benchmarks show that their cards are still not able to match up
to that of ATI and NVIDIA's standard.

How to select a graphics card?
Firstly, based on your needs. Are you a heavy gamer who needs the most powerful card,
or a average gamer who will do with a game or two now and then? Do you do video editing
or want to watch TV on your PC? Go to hardware review sites such as
www.tomshardware.com and read review on your targeted card and how it benchmarks
against other cards.

If you are a light gamer or a home user, you should looking at a ATI Radeon 9200 or a
GeForce FX 5200. This would be sufficient to watch DVDs and play Counterstrike etc with
fairly good frame rates. If you want to watch TV you might want to consider a
ALL-IN-WONDER card, which include a TV tuner and other goodies.

[flyflyflyaway]

Heres Part 2!

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Medium gamers should be looking at the GeForce FX 5600 or Radeon 9600 cards. This range
of cards are able to let you play all of today's games very well. Right now the 9600
Pro is the best bang for the buck gaming experience.

Hardcore gamers would want a screamer like a GeForce FX 5950 or a Radeon 9800 XT. The
9800XT outpaces the 5950 in most benchmarks, and the 5950 is inferior in image quality
compared to the 9800XT. So you should really be looking at the 9800XT if you are a
hardcore gamer. Also, there is the next generation cards from ATI and NVIDIA. These
outpace even the 5950 and 9800XT, and by a whole lot. They are very expensive, but for
the performance increase they will satisfy any game's demands for a while.

Card specifications
AGP modes: AGP 8x is the standard now and unless you are upgrading, getting an AGP 8x
graphics card and motherboard is something you want to do. AGP 2x and 4x are things of
the past. Its no-no to PCI graphics cards, as their transfer speed is too slow. Even
budget cards are all AGP 8x now.

Also, there is the new PCI express standard. PCI express is going to replace PCI and
AGP, and provides a massive bandwidth increase. Graphics cards will use the PCI express
X16 slot. There are already PCI express cards on the market, but at this point in time
it provides no performance increase. When graphics cards become more powerful, there
will be a need for PCI express, but at this point in time, there is no need.

Memory: To store video data. In the past, cards used to take memory from the system RAM
to store video data. But as these video data became larger and larger, cards soon were
made with memory in the card just for storing video data. 128 MB of DDR RAM is the
standard. Few benchmarks show a difference between 128 MB and 256 MB of RAM. Of course,
if you have the extra money, there is no harm in getting more. Also the extra RAM will
mean you are ready for future games that demand more.

DirectX: You should go for a card that can support at least DirectX 9. DirectX is what
software uses to interact with the hardware. You can think of DirectX, software, and
hardware as a telephone. Your software is the person on the end of the phone talking,
then DirectX is the telephone wire going to the listener on the other end, which
represents your video card. Newer versions of DirectX have more features, so you should
always look for a card that supports the newest version. DirectX 9 is the most recent
version, and is used in all recent video cards.

[flyflyflyaway]

Ahhh, finally Part 3...
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On a side note, the next generation cards from NVIDIA has something that the ATI next
generation cards don't have. This is called Pixel Shader 3.0. It will be implimented in
DirectX 9.0c, and improves image quality. Go here -
http://www20.graphics.tomshardware.com/ ... index.html - for a full
explanation.

You also need the DirectX software along with your graphics card. You can download the
newest version from Microsoft here -
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx. Installing newer versions of
DirectX will only affect your graphics if you have a card that supports it. For
example, if you had a graphics card that supports DirectX 8.1, and you run DirectX 9 so
you can play a new game that needs at least DirectX 9 to run, the game will run but you
will see no graphical improvements over DirectX 8.1. Either way, you should always run
the most up-to-date version of DirectX to ensure that all games will run on your
computer. So in theory, you can run DirectX 9 and DirectX 9 games on a DirectX 7 card
if you wanted, but don't expect anything great graphics-wise. Also, you don't need to
worry about old games not running with newer versions of DirectX. DirectX is designed
to be backwards compatible, meaning you can run DirectX 7 games with DirectX 9 if you
want.

Once you have decided on a particular card, for example a Radeon 9600 Pro, you will
realize that there are many manufacturers making cards based on the Radeon 9600 Pro
chipset, for example, Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Powercolor, Hercules, Sapphire etc. These
cards don't differ much from the reference cards, and performance-wise also. Some
manufacturers offer more warranty on their cards, or free games along with the card.
Among these manufacturers is for you to decide which manufacturer gives you the best
deal.

One more thing to look out for, the SE cards. These cards are scaled down versions of a
card, so for example, a Radeon 9600SE is just a low powered 9600. Try to steer clear
from these, unless you are on a very tight budget. The way they are low powered is the
internal memory bus. This is the connection between the memory on the graphics card and
the GPU. On SE versions this is only half the width of the regular card, while in the
regular versions it is twice as wide. The narrower bus really cripples the card, that
is why you should try to steer clear of SE versions. This only applies to ATI cards,
since NVIDIA doesn't use the SE designation.

The newer high end cards have a 256-bit wide memory bus.

The XT and pro cards are just variations of the other cards. The XT versions are more
powerful than the pro versions, and the regular versions are more powerful than the SE
versions. For example, a 9600 pro card would be more powerful than a regular 9600 card.
Again, this only applies to ATI cards. For NVIDIA, the Ultra versions are always the
most powerful versions. One more word about XT though. Unlike ATI, NVIDIA use the XT
designation to show that it is a lower powered version, much like ATI's SE. Again, try
to steer clear of these cards.

For a full listing of all the graphics card's specifications, look here -
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20 ... index.html. From this list you should be
able to make your choice, from everything you have learnt in this guide.

[the_autopilot]

Since you made no price specifications, here are the flagship cards out right now.

For directx-accelerated cards:
Nvidia 6800 Ultra (AGP8x or PCI-e)
ATI X850 xt PE (PCI-e only)
ATI X800 XT PE (AGP 8X or PCi-e)

For opengl-accelerated cards:
Nvidia Quadro FX 4400 (PCI-e only)
3dLabs Wildcat Realizm 800 (PCI-e only)

I have all these cards (with the exception of the x850 and quodro fx4400)and can tell you that they offer the best of the best performence.