A video card or graphics card is a device designed to convert information from a computer's hard drive into visual effects on a monitor screen.
Instructions
Step 1
There are two main types of graphics cards: discrete board and integrated chip. The first type is installed in a special slot located on the computer motherboard. The most popular are video adapters with PCI, AGP and PCI-Express slots. It should be noted that motherboards with AGP port have already been discontinued.
Step 2
Integrated video adapters are a separate chip located on the motherboard. Sometimes its functions are performed by one of the parts of the server bridge of the motherboard.
Step 3
Modern discrete video cards are able not only to transmit the necessary information, but also to process it independently. This is a very important feature because it can significantly reduce the load on the central processor. It is very noteworthy that the graphics processor of a video card can be used to perform other functions.
Step 4
The main manufacturers of the video card are Intel, nVidia and AMD. Modern video cards are equipped with several ports that carry a signal. Typically a combination of analog (D-Sub or S-Video) and digital (DVI or HDMI) is used. The presence of different types of channels allows you to use one video card to display images simultaneously on two monitors of different types. Modern models of video cards can be equipped with six video outputs at once.
Step 5
The main characteristics of video cards include the following parameters: - Memory bus width. A very important characteristic that affects the performance of the video adapter. - The amount of video memory. Integrated video cards use the computer's RAM, since they do not have their own video memory. - Memory and core frequencies. Directly affects the performance of the video card.
