Computer Video Cards
Looking for Good Cheap Video Cards
or the Best That Money Can Buy ?
When it comes to
computer video cards / computer graphics cards the choice is
massive there are well over a thousand different cards around to
choose from, some range from a few bucks, others up to around
$550.
This may seem like a
lot of money to pay for a graphics card , but you really do get
what you pay for .
A mid level graphics
card is fine for most people , but if your after the full gaming
experience where you can bump everything up to maximum on the
latest and greatest of games there really can be no alternative.
Playing a game on a 17” screen with a resolution of 1280 x 1024
pixels or even 1024 x 768 pixels with a good frame rate requires
massive processing power, together with even more processing
power to add features such as anti-aliasing.
Trying to skimp
on your computer video cards if your into your gaming is a big
no no.
How to get a good
computer Graphics card / Video card for the best price
A couple of ways to save money on computer video cards is to
either buy second user card from e-Bay or the like ,so if you
looking for something like a 256mb nVidia geforce 6800 graphics
cards this might be the answer “ but please remember , probably
it won’t come with a warranty , and why would someone be selling
a top of the range graphics card when there is nothing else to
really upgrade to .
So make sure they
have a good feedback .
The other way to save
money is don’t buy the latest cards around , buy the generation
before that .
The performance
difference is not going to be huge and you might end up saving a
bundle.
Interface
Types
There are a number of
interfaces you need to check on before getting your new card.
The Interfaces are .
PCI
PCI graphics interfaces are a
little old now, and you might have a great graphics card, but
the actual PCI slot will be the bottleneck in your system here,
hampering graphics performance as the PCI slot can only operate
at the bus speed of the computer .
Only older Pentium 2
computers or below should have PCI slots for graphics”
AGP
AGP “ Accelerated Graphics Port “
AGP comes in a few different flavours x2 , x4 , x8 .
AGP x2 enables your
computer video card to run at twice the speed of the computers
bus speed, thus giving a big performance increase over PCI .
AGP x4 enables twice
as much data to be sent as AGP x2 . AGP x8 enables again twice
as much data to be sent as AGP x4.
To sum this up , it
means the bus bandwidth of a PCI card is around 127mb per sec,
compared to 2.1gb of data through put of AGP x8.
One thing to bare in
mind with AGP graphics cards is if you purchase an AGP 8x card
and your motherboard only supports up to 4x then, the card will
only run at 4x , so you will lose some performance,
Which could be a
large or small difference depending on the amount of data being
transferred through the bus.
PCI Express
PCI Express is the latest of the
port technology, it can be used for a multitude of cards not
just Video.
It offers around
twice the performance of the AGP 8x ports. Prices at present are
still quite high , of course in addition to the higher video
card prices , AGP motherboards would have to be replaced with
PCI-Express types.
Recommended
computer video card specifications
The first thing to look
for is the chipset, at present the ones recommended are the
GeForce chipset and the ATI Radeon . The next thing is the
amount of memory, today any decent card should have at least
512mb
There are a lot of
models to suit all budgets around so if your looking for good
cheap video cards around $50 , the Chaintech GeForce FX5200 or
the Asus Radeon 9250 offer good value for money.
If you looking to
spend around $130 then a good choice would be the Nvidia GeForce
6600 or the Diamond Viper Radeon 9600xt .
 If
money is no object then how about one of these computer video
cards , an ATI Radeon X800L or a BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra GT .
“ you’ll have to make
sure your monitor has a DVI video socket though, or at least buy
a VGA to DVI converter “
Portable / Laptop
Gaming
Laptops / notebooks and graphics
have come a long way over the past years and now we even have
laptops designed for gaming.
If you are looking
for a laptop and want a decent graphics card make sure it says
GeForce or ATI on the cover.
With laptops it’s a
case of once you’ve purchased it, you may be able to upgrade
certain parts , but it’s quite rare to find one that you can
upgrade the graphics on, so that’s what you’ll be stuck with.
computer video cards
Have a read of our laptop guide where we have more
information on what to consider when your looking for a laptop.
Need a hand fitting your video card ? checkout our install page.
Need a hand fitting your computer video cards ? checkout our
install page.
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