Archive for the ‘Graphics Cards’ Category

by Nick Shine

Graphics Card

Image by Simon Grubb
My graphics card died.I went to PC World to get a new one.I was told it was my mother board.And i would need to bring it in for repairs.No its the graphics card thats broken i said.After 15 minutes i left them wanting to charge me nearly 150 quid.I went to Maplins got the new card and saved 75 quid.Funny thing is that my PC works fine now!

Dedicated graphics cards, which we will be discussing in this guide, are needed if you want to do 3D gaming or watch high definition movies (even though it may sometimes suffice with a powerful CPU and lot’s of internal RAM) Important Specifications to Consider When Choosing a Graphics Card

GPU

GPU stands for “Graphic Processing Unit” and is the main controlling circuit on every graphics card. The GPU is the most determinant feature of every graphics card when it comes to the overall performance and speed. The two biggest manufacturers of GPUs are NVIDIA and ATI (which is owned by CPU manufacturer AMD). They do the reference designs for each new generation of graphics card. But most graphics cards are sold by other manufacturers who produce their own flavour of the reference cards from NVIDIA and ATI. Examples of those manufacturers are MSI, Asus, ECS Elitegroup, XFX and more. Examples of recent generations of graphic GPUs from NVIDIA are; GeForce 8500/8600/8800/9800 GT/GTX/GX2 and GTX 260/280. ATIs latest generations of graphics cards are: RADEON HD 3850/4850/4870 in different versions.

RAM

It is also important to consider the amount and type of the onboard RAM of the graphics card, which is a different thing than the RAM of your computer. The RAM is important for a number of technical reasons we will not go into further here. But in short you should go for a graphics card with at least 256MB of RAM. The type of RAM is less important, but we recommend that you buy a graphics card with the second or later generation of GDDR (GDDR2 or later).

Different Slot Types

There are three different slots available on the PC market. The “slot” is where you connect the graphics card on the mainboard of your computer. You must verify which type of slot your mainboard has before purchasing a graphic card, or you may waste money on something you cannot use. The available slots are PCI (very old), AGP (old) or PCI express (today’s standard). All fairly recent bought computers are outfitted with a PCI Express slot, but be sure to check it. PCI express is the newest technology and allows the largest bandwidth which means better performance for you.

External Connectors

The connecters on the graphics cards are also important. Standard analog VGA connectors have been replaced by DVI (digital) connectors. The DVI connector is a must, some cards even come with two DVI connectors which will allow you to connect an extra display. Additional external connectors to look for are: •HDMI, which will enable you to connect your computer to a plasma or LCD-TV. (This can also be done through a DVI connector with a DVI/HDMI converter) •S-Video outputs are used to connect the PC to an older style VCR or TV and allow outputting the same display as present on your screen. •DB-15/VGS/SVGA connectors are basically utilized for a standard output to an analog monitor. Good if you have an old monitor.

Considering your budget

Of course, you financial possibilities will limit your purchase options too. Let’s take a look of what you can expect depending on how much you want or can afford. Remember that graphics cards are products with short cycles so suggestions below are only guide lines.

Low budget graphic cards

We are talking about spending to , what can you expect? In this lower budget level the most popular and valuable GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA are the ATI Radeon HD 3650 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 and 8600GT/GTS. These cards typically carry a RAM of 256MB-512MB depending on model and manufacturer. There are no problems to find cards with multiple DVI connectors and some even carry a HDMI connector. These types of cards are suitable for silent HTPCs and media centres since you can get them with silent passive coolers. We cannot recommend the entry level graphics cards for hardcore gaming rigs, even though they will play some older games with no sweat.

Medium priced graphic cards

In this segment, with prices from to 0, you will find graphics cards with good performance even for gaming. You should be aware, because as we said, this is a fast moving market and you can sometimes find real bargains on the current generation of graphics cards when the next generation cards are introduced to the market. Prices drops fast when retailers and e-tailers have to make place in their stock for the new generation of cards. As always we recommend you to read expert reviews of graphics cards to find which the leading expert editors have recommended. Also based on the reviews, try to find out which is the last generation of GPU for the time being. Right now the last generation high end GPU from NVIDIA is the GTX 280. We couldn’t find a 280 GTX card below 0, but we did find one for 0 so the prices are dropping. We recommend you to go with the next to last generation cards like the GeForce 9800GTX or 9800GX2 (dual onboard GPU) and the ATI HD 3850 and 4870. They will offer you a great performance/price ratio.

Advanced graphic cards

Obtaining maximal performance and resolution may lead you to spend 0 and above on a high end graphics cards. This is for real gamers who need that extra FPS rate and resolution to perform optimally. You should look for dual GPU solutions, either onboard dual GPUs or using SLI or Crossfire technology (two physically separated graphics cards working together). The 3870 X2 with 1GB RAM from ATI is a good alternative and is somewhat cheaper than the 4870 X2 which naturally gives some extra percents of performance. From NVIDIA you should take a look at the GTX 280 and 9800GX2.

How to install a graphics card Credits: , HowStuffWorks

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EVGA nVidia GeForce GT 220 1 GB DDR3 DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card 01G-P3-1226-LR

• PCI Express 2.0
• GeForce GT 220 with 625 MHz core clock
• 1024 MB of DDR3 memory
• 1580 MHz memory clock and 1360 MHz shader clock
• Windows XP, Windows Vista and Open GL 3.1 Support

The features of the GT 220 01G-P3-1226-LR include the GeForce GT 220 (625 MHz core clock) chipset, 1024 MB of DDR3 memory with a 1580 MHz memory clock, 128 bit memory width, 1.2 ns speed and 25.28 GB per second memory bandwidth, 1360 MHz shader clock, PCI-Express 2.0 compatibility, DVI-I, VGA and HDMI interfaces. Additional performance-enhancing features include a DVI-I output, second generation Unified Shader Architecture, NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology, NVIDIA PhysX ready, NVIDEA CUDAand Open GL 3.1 support, Windows XP and Windows Vista support. This product comes with a one year warranty with an additional year free if registered at within 30 days of purchase.

List Price: $ 77.99

Price:

by rastrus

A graphics card is one of computer hard drive that arranges the videos and pictures that show up in your computer. So, the picture quality of your movies you watched or games you played are determined by your graphics card. The graphics card or often also called video card is placed and attached inside the motherboard. It has to be placed fit and securely in the motherboard. It is very important because your graphics is determined by video card.

You have to know that there many kinds of graphics or video card. You have to choose the best one to fix to your need. When you want to upgrade your graphics card, it is just a simple, because it is only about the matter of the slot. There are two slots; PCI or AGP, you can choose one of them for your graphics card. What slot you are going to choose is depended on your computer. AGP is a better one because it has a better technology, it transfer the data much faster than the PCI one. But it is different if your computer is under 2000 producing year, most of such kinds do not have AGP slot or maybe it will not be faster. AGP also has many different speeds; 1x, 2x and many more.

It is important for you to choose the best slot for your graphics card; which the best one AGP or PCI. Every computer certainly has PCI slot for the graphics card, so it is free for PCI graphics card to use in any computer. But if you need the faster graphics card, you should use the AGP one and be sure that your computer has the suitable slot. You can understand about it by asking to the costumer service of the computer manufacture via phone or email, reading the guideline book of your computer, or you can open your CPU to see the brown slot on the motherboard. The brown slot usually stands for the AGP graphics card and for the PCI graphics card; it is usually colored in white. But there are some computers make it different. The other thing you must remember is the AGP slot is smaller than the PCI’s. So you can see the differences without any hesitate of being fault.

There are still many people who can use a computer but they do not understand about what there inside. For you who do not know much, I tell you that there are two things about graphics card that should be known. First to know is the memory size. It is important to know how large the memories of graphics card RAM. The large memory is good to have, but it is better if it is suitable with our needs, what we are going to do with such memory, so that it will not be wasting much money. Second to know is how great the capability of the graphics card, because there are many unimportant technical terms such as floating points, pixels, etc. All the needs to see is the DirectX capabilities if you are a windows user. DirectX is the software that is usually used to process the information of the graphics; it means that you have to have a graphics card that used the newest DirectX version. You can know the most up to date version of DirectX by surfing in Microsoft website.

If you have made sure all of your tools and parts of your computer is fixed, you can just install the upgrading of your graphics card. It is just a simple thing to do. You just need to shut down your computer and make sure that every part has not been run. Then open up the case of you CPU and take the cover off, so can see the inside of the CPU. If there is still a useless slot, you can take it off and save it, it can be used next time you need it. This is a simple but all you have to concern is the careful. Make sure that you will not make some damages. Be careful when you remove the old graphics card.

Then, you can start to get your new graphics card out from the box and remove it from the cover. Move it in to the PCI or AGP slot on the motherboard. Push the new graphics card in its both sides so that it will totally fit to the slot. And then use a screwdriver to screw the graphics card into the slot holder so that it can not move to any where. Next, connect all of cable that have to be connected to the card such as a power supply connector, audio cable and many more. You have to make sure that everything is connected in the right place. You can read the manual of the card to avoid the connection fault.

When you have finished the card installation, you must put on your computer case back, plug everything back as before, and you have well done all of it. Try to start up your computer and your desktop need to be installed the card driver. You can install the driver from the CD or Floppy disk that you got from the graphics card. But if you desktop do not need the driver it means that it only needs the generic driver of the Windows. Now you have understood about the graphics card and how to install and upgrade it. You will need the knowledge sometimes. Do not be lazy in knowing and studying something because where ever you will go it will give advantages for you.

For all the latest reviews and gear! www.motherboards.org Follow us on twitter! http ATI launched the HD 4890 video chip earlier this year in April and today it is one of the bestselling video cards in the world with cards available at the same price point as the GeForce GTX 275 or lower and offering similar performance but more features (DirectX 10.1). The HD 4890 is available online for as low as 3, making it one of the better deals in terms of price/performance. ASUS sells a lot of video cards based on both NVIDIA and ATI chips and this review is on the ASUS EAH4890/HTDI/1GD5/A card.

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by viagallery.com

The Best Graphics Card I’ve Ever Owned

Image by Brian Landis
This is, hands down, the single best graphics card I have ever owned. Only one has been through more abuse- my Geforce 4 4400 Titanium. That card is actually still in active service in one of my other crunching computers. It has approximately 6 years of power-on time. This card can’t claim that, but it has run a phenomenal amount of data through it. It’s power efficient (given its performance), it’s quiet, it’s rock solid, it runs cool, and it still renders the latest games beautifully at high frame rates even though it’s 3 year old architecture.

The only other graphics card I’ve had that could compare in terms of quality was my Radeon 9800 Pro, which unfortunately died a horrid, slow, artifacting death over a week after nearly 5 years of service.

It got a thorough cleaning (something I do every 3 months) and is now happily crunching data and graphics in Miss Nibs’ computer. Why? Because of this.and this.

Nvidia on Friday announced seven new 400M GeForce series graphics cards for laptops, which could provide the possibility of parallel processing to speed browsing and rendering 3D images .
Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome has introduced or is about is the ability to off-load tasks such as rendering HTML 5 video to Flash or graphics processors. New Nvidia GeForce graphics cards will be faster to process these tasks than the CPU, which should make browsing the Web snappier.
The new cards will be about 40 percent faster than previous 300M series of tasks, said Ken Brown, a spokesman for Nvidia.
While the CPU is the heart of running tasks, developers writing applications to exploit the parallel processing of GPUs to speed up the application, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst with Mercury Research. This is one of the changes in the new browser is the possibility that they support, said McCarron.
Laptops with Intel Core has an integrated graphics processor in a single chip next to the CPU. However, discrete graphics processors are faster and wider pipes for running applications, McCarron said.
, but the GPU can draw more power than the CPU and integrated graphics, which can affect battery life in laptops. NVIDIA graphics cards support the new technology called Optimus switch, in which specific tasks, such as video playback can be seamlessly switch between the CPU and GPU. GPU kicks in only when needed, saving laptop battery life.
Nvidia declined to comment on the power flowing from the new graphics cards, citing company policy. The company has had a charge for defective matrices and the weak packaging material used in its graphics chips, which led to the laptop overheating. These issues have been resolved for a while, Brown said. NVIDIA GPUs are made of different production ground to prevent the chips from heat problems at the time. Our graphics processors operate in a level of tolerance of their specification and design restrictions on the notebooks case, said Brown.
More laptops are the costs of the discrete GPU as users look for more powerful multimedia capabilities, McCarron said. Nvidia is trying to extend its presence in the market with new products, and will have to compete with rival Advanced Micro Devices, which already offers Radeon HD graphics cards laptop.
In addition to web browsing, video cards will provide a better gaming experience and bring 3D Blu-ray movie playback laptops, Nvidia Brown said. Graphic cards will support DirectX 11, Microsofts latest graphics technology in Windows 7 OS.
The new offer includes a GeForce GT 415, GT 420 m, GT 425, GT 435M, 445M GT and GTX 460M 470m faster and GTX graphics cards. Cards will be available only for PC manufacturers and Nvidia did not comment on when the laptops become available. Graphics cards will be offered by PC manufacturers, including Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba.
Individual prices for graphics cards has not been disclosed.

Via: Fresh Tech
Description of Source:
Fresh News of Consumer Electronics Guide
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