How to Choose a 3-D Accelerator Card
You need a fast, high-end 3-D video card for action games, graphic design, CAD, 3-D modeling and image editing. 3-D acceleration is now a standard feature on video cards.
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Instructions
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Check reviews in computer magazines and on the Internet to help you narrow your choices.
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Buy an AGP (accelerated graphics port) video card for a new computer. If your computer doesn't have an AGP slot, buy a PCI (peripheral component interconnect; this is your basic expansion card bus) video card.
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Make sure the card supports the latest version of DirectX.
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Look for a high RAMDAC clock speed (expressed in MHz).
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Buy a card with at least 8MB of video RAM. Get a card with more video RAM if you need to do detail work on a very large monitor or need an infinite variety of colors for original design.
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Look for a high frame-rate specification for action games or streaming video applications.
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Compare limited warranties and technical support terms and hours.
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Tips & Warnings
If you might install a flat-panel monitor, make sure the video card has a connector for one.
If you might use a DVD drive, look for a video card with a built-in MPEG-2 DVD decoder and motion compensation.
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Comments
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Jul 01, 2006
If you are using your card for gaming or any other high performance task, be sure to get one that supports at least Shader Model 1.1 and DirectX 8. These dictate the complexity and quality of special effects your card can efficiently produce. For high-quality effects, get DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 2.0 support. -
Jul 01, 2006
If you are using your card for gaming or any other high performance task, be sure to get one that supports at least Shader Model 1.1 and DirectX 8. These dictate the complexity and quality of special effects your card can efficiently produce. For high-quality effects, get DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 2.0 support.
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Nov 22, 2005
Nowdays, 64 mb is absolute minimum, while 128 mb is the suggested minimum on some modern games. Going with 256 mb helps you become future proof. Also note that RAM and MHz is not everything. The number of "pipelines" also dictates speed. High end cards today have about 16 pipelines.
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Nov 22, 2005
AGP 4x/8x was the old standard. If you are building a new PC right now, you want PCI-express, also noted with x16 at the end.
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Nov 22, 2005
Nowdays, 64 mb is absolute minimum, while 128 mb is the suggested minimum on some modern games. Going with 256 mb helps you become future proof. Also note that RAM and MHz is not everything. The number of "pipelines" also dictates speed. High end cards today have about 16 pipelines.
