Buying a videocard can be a daunting task given the fact that they all look the same but have wildly varying specifications and features. Follow along as we explain the ins and outs of videocards, and reveal everything you need to know before plunking down your greenbacks.
1. The Golden Rule: You get what you pay for (usually)
In general, you get what you pay for when buying a videocard. If you are looking at two cards from the same manufacturer, and one costs more, it’s usually more powerful and able to run games at higher levels of quality and at higher resolutions. Comparing cards from different manufacturers can be confusing due to their different naming conventions, but even then the golden rule still usually applies. The only time this rule does not apply is at the very top of the videocard hierarchy, where cards are insanely expensive and only slightly faster than the next-cheapest card. For example, NVIDIA’s 8800 Ultra is only five-to-ten percent faster than the 8800 GTX, and yet it costs $250 USD more. Is that little performance boost worth the cash? For most people, the answer is “no.” Typically it’s the second or third least expensive card in a product line that hits the price-versus-performance sweet spot, such as the NVIDIA 8800 GT, which is $200 USD less expensive than the 8800 GTX but is only 5% slower in most benchmarks.
2. How Much is Enough?
If you’re just playing casual games like Peggle, you can probably get away with onboard video that is included with your motherboard, but if you want an add-in card get a cheap one since casual games are not very demanding. If you want to play next-gen 3D games like Crysis, you’ll need to spend at least $250 USD to make it even remotely playable due to its demanding nature. Luckily, most games aren’t as demanding as Crysis, so spending $150-$200 USD will be sufficient to play most games at medium detail.
3. Which Brand of Videocard do You Choose?
There are two primary companies making add-in (as opposed to onboard) videocard chipsets for consumers, and that’s ATI/AMD and NVIDIA. The companies then sell the chips to dozens of vendors who either leave the design as is or add some value to it via a software bundle, overclocking and so forth. In most cases the cards are all the same (overclocking aside), so what separates one vendor from another is the company’s warranty and tech support. For example, XFX offers a transferable lifetime warranty on all its cards, which is great. Also, eVGA offers a “step up” program that allows you to return a card you bought for full retail value within 90 days if you want to “step up” to a more powerful card. So if you pay $300 USD for a card, then two months later a newer, faster card comes out for $500 USD, you can send it back to eVGa and pay just $200 USD for the new card.
4. How Much RAM Do You Need?
In a nutshell, RAM is used on videocards mostly for gaming duties. Games store texture data in RAM, and textures are used on surfaces in the game world. More RAM means you can a game at higher resolutions and at higher settings. The minimum you should get these days is 256MB of RAM, as that will work for most games as long as you’re not running a super-high resolution like 1920×1200. For those looking for maximum performance, do not go below 512MB as this is the current sweet spot in terms of price and relevance. Even though cards like the 8800 GTX Ultra have 768MB of RAM, few – if any – games can use that much memory. If you don’t play games but just surf the net and such, don’t worry about the amount of RAM on your videocard as it won’t have a major impact on performance.
5. AGP vs. PCI-E
If you have a system that was built a few years ago, chances are you have an AGP slot for your videocard, which will severely hinder your upgrade options. AGP has been replaced by PCI Express, which is likely to be the standard for at least the next few years. You can still find AGP videocards, but they are few and far between these days, and are all low-end cards. If you have AGP supported motherboard in your PC and want to upgrade to a motherboard with a PCI-E slot, you’ll also have to upgrade your memory and CPU as well, so it can be an expensive but worthwhile endeavor.
6. Extra Power
Most power supplies have power cables for your hard drives, optical drive and mainboard. But with the arrival of PCI Express (see above) we witnessed the birth of a dedicated PCI-E power cable, which is required by some high-powered cards. If you buy a card that requires this power cable, but your PSU (power supply) doesn’t have one, you will need a four-pin molex-to-PCI-E adapter to convert a standard four-pin cable for use with a videocard. Luckily, most videocards that require this include one of these connectors in the box. If not, they are inexpensive and easy to find online.
7. DirectX 9 and DX10
DirectX has been around for a long time, and is a collection of APIs used by game developers to render graphics on compatible videocards – more or less. For example, in order to play a DirectX 9 game you need a DirectX 9 capable videocard. Make sense? Games that use DX9 and earlier versions are still around, but Microsoft recently unveiled DirectX 10, which includes features not found in DirectX 9 and is only available with Windows Vista (Microsoft XP does not support DX10). Videocard manufacturers are also releasing DX10 cards now as well. At this time, there are only a handful of games that support DX10, and in reality it’s not a must-have feature at this point, though that will likely change in the coming years. As it stands now, it is not worth it to upgrade your operating system just for DX10. Our advice is to get a DX10 card for maximum future proofing, but hold off on Vista until there are more DirectX 10 games available.
8. Crossfire and SLI
Despite the immense power offered by today’s videocards, sometimes a single videocard still isn’t enough to run a game at max settings or at super-high resolutions. To remedy this situation, both ATI and NVIDIA offer the ability to add a second card that works in tandem with the original card for a huge increase in performance. All you need is two videocards (same make and model), and a compatible motherboard. The only downside to this approach is its cost, and the fact that not all games are compatible with dual-card solutions. Often times either game-maker or the graphics card company has to release a patch to either enable it or to improve performance, so it’s not a simple plug-and-play operation usually.
9. What if you’re not a gamer?
If you’re not a gamer, then you have little need for an add-in videocard. The majority of motherboards sold today have a video chipset on the motherboard (called onboard video), and it’s more than sufficient for web surfing, emailing and casual games like Scrabble. If you are into video editing and image editing, those tasks don’t tax the videocard nearly as hard as games do, and are more dependent on the amount of system memory you have as well as the strength of your CPU.
Shopping for a videocard can be confusing due to the sheer number of specs and data points for a modern videocard. But just remember the basics. For maximum future proofing, you want a DirectX 10 capable card. Aside from that, how much horsepower you need is determined by the kind of games you want to play.
