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How
To Choose the Best Graphics Card
by my-tech-guide.com
The
old days of computing asked us to be content with computers
that uttered no sound except the occasional “beep,” printers
that made more noise than a cat using a scratching post,
and monitors that offered either an orange or a green glow.
Fortunately, these days are history, and we may now
bask in the glow of our high resolution monitors who offer
us life-like images on a daily basis. We no longer
squint at some fuzzy displays, but instead enjoy almost seamless
animation on many a website.
These
images are simply a mass of barely visible dots, also called
pixels. At this time, monitors display more than
a million pixels, and it is up to the computer to interpret
how to allocate these pixels in order to create an identifiable
image. This interpretation process takes place on
the graphics card. Since these cards may be upgraded, many
a user is tempted to look for the latest and the greatest
(or costliest) cart out there, but is there a better method
for choosing just the right graphics card for the job? The
answer is an emphatic “yes” and here are five how-to solutions
that will aide you in determining which would be the best
graphics card for your computer.
First
and foremost, do you really need a graphics card? Let’s
say that all you wish to do with your computer is a bit
of Internet surfing, some word processing, and perhaps
a little bit of e-mail and chat room activity. In this
case, all the graphics support you will most likely need
can be found on a motherboard with integrated graphics
capabilities.
If
you find that you will indeed need more than your average
motherboard can offer, such as those who work with graphic
arts or who play a lot of computer games, you will want to
look for a card that has a lot of memory as well as a high-speed
processor.
Another
tool a user may wish to employ is the frame rate measurement
which is often a major advertising component for the different
graphics cards. Essentially, this rate refers
to the measurement of frames per second (FPS) which is
nothing more than the rate of complete images a graphics
card will display in one second. High end cards will display
more than 60 FPS (which is more than twice the amount the
human eye can process per second) and thus provide the
illusion of animation and animated scrolling.
Those
who do a lot of graphic work will not be content with the
FPS rating. As anyone who has ever done any 3-D
imaging on the computer will be able to tell you, FPS will
actually do very little to measure the worth of a graphics
card for them. Actually, 3-D images are nothing more than
triangles, and graphic cards catering to the graphic artist
demographic offer a rating that calculates how quickly
the card can calculate the triangles and build the frame
image.
One
item that concerns everyone is speed. All graphics
cards’ speed is directly affected by their hardware. If
the clock speed and bit rate are low, then the card will
operate much slower than in they were high. Additionally,
the pre-existing hardware also plays a vital role. A high-end
graphics card cannot make up for an otherwise antiquated
computer system, and a low end computer processor or motherboard
with counteract the speed of even the fasted graphics card.
It
is obvious that upgrading a graphics card is not so simple
a task, and bigger is not always better. If you
have a somewhat antiquated system, it may be a useless
endeavor to only upgrade your graphics card, since your
system may very well negate any speed increase your card
may be able to offer you. Similarly, if your needs are
very simple (in computing terms) then it might not we worthwhile
to spend a lot of money on a graphics card that you will
not use to its full potential. Thus, it is always wise
to know what you will need prior to buying, and to be fully
aware of your system’s hardware and software configuration
prior to adding a new component to the mix.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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