Four Items to Consider Before Purchasing a Graphics Card
GPU Buyers Guide : Both graphics cards, as well as video cards, are two of the most costly aspects of an entire computer system and for that reason a great deal of thought must go into the purchase of either one of them. They are also items that can sometimes be difficult to make a decision about. The most important thing to do is to have adequate information at your disposable before you purchase a graphics card. Let’s look at four items to consider before you make the purchase.
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First of all the price range of graphics cards is very diverse so you have to narrow down exactly how much money you have to spend on a graphics card. Prices range from $50.00 all the way up to $700.00. Graphics cards are equipped with processors in much the same way that there is a main CPU in a computer. The name give to the processor in a graphics card is GPU. The faster the GPU is the better but this also means the more expensive it will be. The quality of your video and graphics will be better the speedier the GPU is in the graphics card.
There is more than one type of expansion slots and the common ones for graphic card processors include the PCI slot, the Express slot and the AGP slot. Each graphic card has its own unique kind of slot and the slots are not interchangeable from card to card. The AGP slot and the PCI Express slots have their own slot speeds. For example the AGP slot has a speed of 4x or 8x whereas the PCI Express has slot speeds of x1, x4, x8, x12, x16 and x32. Before you purchase any graphics card always check on the expansion slot to see if it is a match for the card you are considering.
The third item to consider before purchasing a graphics card is the manufacturer. There are a variety of companies that manufacture graphics card processors, but the two best-known companies are ATI and Nvidia. In general which brand you choose is more of a question of personal taste than anything else. If you tend to prefer the products from one particular company then go with them as your first choice for a graphics card. Games do not tend to be dependent on manufacturers either therefore when considering the company the two most important aspects that should figure into your decision are the performance of the graphics card and the cost of the card.
The higher end graphics cards that are manufactured by Nvidia have a way that makes it possible to take two graphics cards that are of the same kind of processor and together they can share the work of showing the video on the computer monitor. When it comes to 3D gaming, using two graphics cards at once helps to seriously improve the performance of the computer system. Be aware that it is only cards made by Nvidia that make use of SLI. SLI will only work properly if the graphics card is the same type of processor.
The four considerations are the video outputs of the graphics card. There are three kinds of video outputs in relation to graphics cards and these include DVI, VGA and S-Video. The majority of newer LCD monitors or other types of digital monitors will come equip with the DVI output. However older CRT monitors are likely to have a VGA output. Most graphics cards that have DVI outputs are made versatile enough to work with VGA monitors with the help of an adapter. If it is your intent to make use of more than one monitor for your computer task at hand, always choose a graphics card that has two outputs or else be ready to purchase another graphics card that will be able to support the use of a second or third monitor.
