Computer Video Card Without a Computer Video Card or graphics card there will be no picture on your Monitor. The Video Card pretty much decides how well the video signal is received by the Monitor. If you put your cash on a high-end Video Card then the Monitor must match that. Nowadays there are only two manufacturers of GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit), nVidia and ATI (belongs to AMD). A GPU is very similar to a CPU, only that it is optimized to work with Video. The better the GPU the more expensive it is. There is no real difference between nVidia and ATI. They are both very good. All Computer Video Cards now use the PCI-Express bus, which has replaced the older AGP. The choice you have is between a Video Card and On-board graphics. On-board graphics is fine if you are building a Budget System and price is the most important. A basic Video Card can be had from US$25, which is very little compared to the total cost of the computer and therefore can make sense even if you are short on cash. The biggest advantage of on-board graphics is the price. The biggest disadvantage is the lack of dedicated memory. On-board graphics will always make use of your RAM and as such takes resources that could have been used better elsewhere. Not to mention that the lack of dedicated memory makes the computer (video rendering) slower. As you might have noticed, high-end Computer Video Cards support technologies like SLI (nVidia) or Crossfire (ATI). These technologies are only relevant to gamers, no one else. They are very advanced and I will not go into detail here. What you should know is that the Motherboard must be SLI or Crossfire certified and that you need two identical Video Cards supporting either SLI or CrossFire to take advantage of this technology. Further, a CPU cannot keep up with the GPU of these Cards and so cannot the Monitor. Only if you have a very large pile of cash it is wise to invest in dual SLI or Crossfire Video Cards. That doesn't mean you shouldn't purchase a SLI or Crossfire Video Card, just that if you want to take advantage of that technology you must spend more money on the processor and Monitor. How to choose a Video CardTo choose a Computer Video Card is easy. If you know what you want and what you can afford then choose the best you can get for your cash. The amount of memory on the card plays an important role, so more memory is usually better. For US$100 you get a good quality Video Card. The port should always be digital (DVI) and see to it that your Monitor supports DVI as well. If you are still in doubt, take a look at our recommendation of the best Video CardVideo Card BrandsThe brands mentioned here are the big ones. I have not mentioned all, some are missing like Albatron but basically the ones below are the most common. Our unique RQI will tell you which brand is offering the best quality. It might not be what you think.
Video Card TechnicalsGPU clock: Similar to the CPU clock speed. The faster the better. Memory: The memory used on Video Cards is not the same as on the Motherboard. Since graphics have demand for high bandwidth, GDDR was developed with this in mind. OpenGL: This is an API for 3D graphics developed by Silicon Graphics. DirectX: This is an API for 3D graphics developed by Microsoft. HDCP: This is a standard for digital content protection of digital audio and video developed by Intel.
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Another thing that might be important to you is the support of multi-monitors. Among advanced gamers and stock traders this is not an uncommon sight. For example a stock trader might want to have charts of several stocks open at the same time or divide the charts on one Monitor and the trading on the other. For some screen real estate is very precious and a multi-monitor solution is vital. Check the Video Card if it support multi-monitor. Some brands like Matrox have specialized on multi-monitor Video Cards.
