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Video Cards
Your computer's video
card will serve as the interface between
your CPU and the computer monitor.
Faster video cards
will utilize an AGP (Accelerated Graphics
Port) port on the computer motherboard. The
AGP slot allows a faster transfer rate than
the standard PCI bus that your video card
would normally use.
Most video graphics cards also have their
own video memory installed on the card,
which increases memory performance. This
will be expressed in MB (MegaBytes), such as
16 MB or 64 MB, etc.
The more inexpensive desktop computers
generally don't have separate video cards.
Instead, they will have an integrated
graphics chip that is designed directly into
the motherboard. The graphics chips that
come as part of a pre-built computer system
are never as powerful as separate video
cards, such as the GeForce series from
NVidia.
If you intend to play high-end computer
games, or if you need to use any software
programs that are very graphic-intensive,
you might want to consider investing in a
more powerful video card.
Recommendations: 4X AGP video
graphics card or higher with 64 MB Video RAM
minimum.
Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)
AGP is an interface developed by Intel which
allows a graphics card to directly access
memory.
This feature, along with wider bandwidth,
helps improve the graphics performance of
your computer and monitor.
For the most part, AGP has replaced older
PCI video cards due to superior performance.
Just about all modern motherboards have an
AGP slot built into them as a standard
feature, and other motherboards will have a
full AGP graphics card built-in.
You will see AGP cards advertised with
different specifications, but the main thing
to look at is throughput (bandwidth), here
is a summary of throughput speeds:
1X - 266
MBps
2X - 533 MBps
4X - 1.07 GBps
8X - 2.14 GBps
MBps is MegaBits per
second, GBps is GigaBits per second.
Obviously, the higher the
throughput, the faster your video card
will perform. However, unless you are
going to use your computer for very
powerful graphical applications, a 2X
AGP video card will be more than
adequate.
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