Video Cards, also known as display adapters, graphics cards, or graphics controllers, converts digital signals into display images.

Many motherboards have an integrated video processing capability. Computers with these motherboards don't need to have an additional Video Card installed. However, if you're planning on using graphics intensive applications, then you should seriously consider adding a higher performance video card to your computer.

The Video Card has three main components:

Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
The GPU is the card's on-board microprocessor (CPU). The GPU is specially designed for rendering graphics for a PC, workstation, or game console (such as the Wii, Xbox, or Playstation). Their highly parallel architecture makes them more efficient at processing complex alogorithms than a general purpose CPU. Integrated (on-the-motherboard) GPUs are usually much less powerful than ones installed on dedicated video cards.

Video Memory
Video Memory is memory dedicated for holding the necessary information for a video card (or graphics controller) to drive a display device such as a monitor. The video memory may be used to hold 3D vector data, backbuffers, textures, GPU programs, and overlays.

Video BIOS
The Video BIOS stores the video card's configuration data. It is a memory chip that contains instructions which allow the video card to interface with the underlying computer hardware and operating system.

Bus Types
The most popular (and functional) cards today are PCI-Express (PCI-E) based. Meaning that the cards are designed to the PCI-E specification and will fit into a PCI-E slot on your motherboard. Modern cards will require a PCI-Express x16 slot.

Still available, are AGP-based video cards. AGP is an older architecture--the cards are slower than PCI-E.

Next down the line are simple PCI-based video cards--slower still than AGP.

Choosing the Right Card for YOU
If you're not a serious gamer, then your choice in video cards won't be difficult. Just about any PCI-E video card out there will suffice for a household computer used for email, Internet browsing, word processing, etc.

If you need the extra horsepower for gaming, then you'll need to choose a higher-end card.

For example, a gamer may look for a card with at least the following:

• 512MB GDDR3 Video Memory
• Multiple monitor support
• Core Clock speed greater than 500Mhz
• Memory bandwidth greater than 60GB/s
• PCI-E 2.0 Interface
• SLI or CrossfireX compatible

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