How To Choose A Video Card

So you're in the market for a new video card. Well, you have many options, and selecting the one thats right for you can be a difficult task. There are many factors that go into your decision, so this guide will help you decide on what is best for you. After you go through the following list, you should have a better idea of what you're looking for in a video card.

• For what purpose(s) do you use your video card? (i.e. gaming, business apps., CAD, etc.)
• What type of computer do you currently own? If you have a 486, a new video card may not help as much.  Also, you want to know what options you have for upgrading, such as having a free PCI or an AGP slot.
• How much are you willing to spend? Video cards can run from $20 to $2000.

The trick is deciding what is best for you, for example if you are only going to run business applications, or just basic web surfing and email, you would only need a card that can display decent resolutions, and at good refresh rates, so the display wont flicker at all. This has a lot to do with your monitor as well, it too must support the same resolution and refresh rates your video card is capable of. The 2d performance of most video cards available today is pretty even across the board, except for at higher resolutions. Some video cards have much better quality than others at the really high resolutions above 1024x768, even though you may not be able to tell a difference at lower resolutions. This factor would be very important if you were doing graphic design, or CAD or any application requiring high resolutions, and of course your monitor must be of high quality and able to display these resolutions at high refresh rates to get the most out of the video card.

As far as 3d graphics are concerned, there are the high-end professional graphics workstation cards, and then the consumer level cards that you go out and buy at your local retailer. I wont cover the professional cards, just some consumer level cards :) I'm assuming you have some kinda average budget here :) For the consumer level cards, there are quite a few choices from companies such as 3dfx, Nvidia, Matrox, ATI, and S3. (Note: 3dfx, Matrox, and ATI make their own chipsets and boards, while Nvidia and S3 make chipsets that other companies sell on their boards, such as Diamond and Creative Labs.) 

The most popular right now are probably Nvidia's TNT2 / TNT2 Ultra chip, and 3dfx's Voodoo 3 cards. Matrox is known for having excellent visual quality, up through the higher resolutions too. ATI and S3 have some decent cards too, although not quite as competitive as Nvidia or 3dfx, and seem to be popular in the OEM market. Some of the things you may want to check when looking at a card's 3d features are: 16 bit vs. 32 bit color depth, API's supported, ire. OpenGL, DirectX, or Glide (an API is basically a programming interface through which the software can talk to the hardware to do specific functions), maximum texture size, and amount of memory on the card. Although specifications are important, what's more important is how the card makes use of those specifications, and its real-world performance. 

The color depth (16 vs. 32 bit) is up to your personal preference. The 3dfx Voodoo3 is the only card out of the bunch that still renders 3d graphics in 16 bit. Keep in mind that the Voodoo cards are geared for gaming, and in my opinion 16 bit is fine for games. If you are going to be working with CAD, or 3d modeling programs, etc.  you may want to stick with a Matrox G400 or Nvidia's TNT/TNT2. All these cards support both OpenGL and DirectX, the two most popular API's. Glide is 3dfx's proprietary API, so it only works on their cards. For texture size, 3dfx supports only up to 256x256 textures, which are fairly small. Newer games are starting to take advantage of larger textures, providing more detail in the game. For example, the TNT/TNT2 cards can support texture sizes up to 2048x2048. As far as the memory goes, the faster cards come with 16 or 32 MB. Voodoo 3 cards only come with 16 MB, and the others can come with 16 or 32. The additional memory helps deal with large amounts of textures at high resolutions faster.

There are some other features you can get on some video cards such as DVD playback acceleration, TV-out, video inputs, or even a TV tuner. All these features add to the price of the card, so just get what you know you will, or want to use. Some cards go even further and combine all these features, such as the 3dfx Voodoo 3 3500, ATI All in Wonder 128, and Matrox Marvel G400. These cards are on the expensive side, but offer all the features you could want. Edit and create home videos, watch tv, or play DVDs on you main TV, play games, etc. The Matrox has the best quality for video editing, and the Voodoo 3500 is the fastest for gaming, with the ATI AIW 128 being somewhere in between, although the Matrox Marvel G400 does offer better gaming performance than the ATI's card.

Finally, you want to make sure you can use this card in your pc. Most all new pc's will have an AGP slot for the video card, and this is what you want to use if you can, since it has many advantages over the PCI interface. You may need a PCI card though, if you are upgrading an older PC, or even a newer one with integrated video. Your best bet for a PCI card would probably be the 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000, or 3500.