Define your needs. Review on General Tips on Graphic Cards

Choosing an appropriate video card for an assembled machine can be quite a daunting task for

the humble computer user, given the wide range of video cards and accelerators available in the hardware market these days. It's enough to make one go crazy especially if buzzwords like Radeon and VooDoo appear to be things straight out of a witch's coction to you.

Before I can shed some light on the actual hardware, let me enumerate on the function of a Video card(most of you can skip this part).

A video card, in lay man's terms, is basically the device which plots instructions given out by the computer on the VDU or the screen. During the good'ol days of archaic computing, Character based images were prepared by the CPU(Processor), which stored the ASCII value for the characters to be displayed, along with the attribute byte for each, into the display adapter's video RAM or memory. In the case of computer graphics, the CPU computed the correct color value(a number with however many bits the colour depth the image required) for each pixel and then stored those numbers in the video card's VRAM(video memory). That did the trick for simple graphics but became a hell lot more CPU intensive with increasing complexities of graphics.

To combat the  above problem, modern day video cards come equipped with their own'graphics co-processor'(Accelerator) This is a small computer within the PC whose sole job in computing pixel color values for graphic images. Now the program which creates the image can describe the same in fairly broad high level terms. For example it may specify a triangle to be drawn  and give the co-ordinates of the corner, the width and colour of the line to be used, and perhaps a colour to fill up the triangle after it's done.

When it comes to buying a video card remember the following commandments:

• More Video Memory means better performance(also higher resolutions)

  
  




• The speed of the card is determined by data bus(eg. 32/64/128 bit) and clock speeds

  
  




• PCI based cards are NOT meant for graphics intensive operations

  
  




• The AGP port is the current standard for Video Accelerators.(1x/2x/4x)

  
  

Let's hope that the above cleares the confusion between generic video cards and graphic accelerators. Let us now consider your purchase desicion based on your NEED.

1. If you're strictly a no-nonsense business user who uses the computer for nothing more than managing inventories or accounts, you can jolly well do with a 32bit PCI Video card with 2 Mb of VRAM. It hardly costs anything and you dont even need a new motherboard with an AGP slot.

   
   




2. If you're the sophisticated business user, who likes to dabble with fancy statistical charts, business presentations and use the net a lot, consider investing in a 64-bit, 2x AGP based accelerator with 4-8Mb of VRAM. These cards are a bit pricey than(1), but they wont make you lose your shirt. Make sure you have a colour monitor.

   
   




3. If you're an avid gamer or an amateur graphic designer or animator(on a budget), you should be looking at a 128bit, 4x AGP based accelerator with 16-32Mb of VRAM. These cards are pretty expensive and furthermore you need a good digital monitor with a high refresh rate to realise the true potential. A 17' would be recommended.

   
   




4. If you're a professional 3D modelling artist or animator with a thick wallet(I mean REALLY thick) to spare, you should be looking at the latest 256bit, 4x AGP accelerators with 64MB of VRAM. Make sure you have a good 19' or a 21' monitor to go along with it.

   
   

So thats that, let us look at issues involving the above categories of cards.

Category 1. and 2.

Be happy if the damn thing works, dont expect any miracles, you hardly paid anything for it anyhow. No one gives you a free lunch honey. Just make sure theres's no visible traces of snowing or distortion. Category 2 should support DirectDraw and earlier versions of Direct3D. The built in Intel 810 graphics controller which one gets on 810 motherboards, also suffices nicely.

Category 3 and 4.

Make sure you're a shylock extracting the last pound of flesh from the dealer. These cards usually retail above the Rs.5, 000 - Rs.7, 000 mark and you have a right to be finicky. Make sure it contains a chipset of a reputed manufacturer. Some of the best babies in the business are:

-category3-

ATI Rage128

S3 Savage4

nVidia TNT2 or Ge-Force/Ge-Force 2 MX

3Dfx VooDoo 3

-category4-

ATI Radeon 7500/8500

nVidia Ge-Force 2 GTS/Ge-Force 3/Ge-Force 4

Matrox Perhelia

Gloria Elsa

Now that you're satisfied about the brand, do consider the following checklist.

Make sure the card supports Direct3D and OpenGL, preferably with texture compression. You should also check for reviews and reports of graphics compliance tests in magazines like PC Quest and Chip.

The card should give a decent frame rate, say above 80 fps in games like Quake 3 at 640X480 and at least 50fps in 800X600.

Stress the card with multiple video screens and check for inconsistency. Render a complex scene in 3D studio MAX and take heed of the render time. If it's way below the suggested time meant for that genre of card, get a replacement.

Guess that should take care of things for now. In case you have individual queries, I would be more than willing to answer your questions.Remember a good video card is like the icing to the cake as  far as a good computer system is concerned.