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Solve : The Graphics Card FAQ? |
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Answer» Introduction: The world of graphics cards is constantly changing, even faster than the rest of the computer industry. This is intended to be a guide to what's on offer at the minute. This guide will be kept up to date if possible, but will inevitably fall behind slightly. Last update: October 24th 2013. For any specific questions, please create a new thread in the appropriate board, most likely hardware. Jargon AMD AMD is a MANUFACTURER of graphics card chips. These chips are added to other video cards and resold by other manufacturers - for example, you may see an Asus AMD Radeon HD7950 - this is an AMD Radeon HD7950, branded, packaged and supported by Asus. Nvidia Nvidia is ATI's rival graphics card manufacturer. Similarly, its cards are rebranded, repackaged and sold by other manufacturers, very seldom by Nvidia themselves, so you may see an EVGA Geforce GTX 780 which is an Nvidia Geforce GTX 780, branded, packaged and supported by EVGA. GPU GPU stands for Graphics processing unit - it's the chip on a graphics card that does all the work. PCI-E (PCI Express) The standard interface for graphics cards. It offers high bandwidth, meaning higher-performance cards. Most new cards available today are for PCI-E. Also sometimes abbreviated as PCI-X, although this is incorrect. AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) This is the older interface for graphics cards. It provides less bandwidth than PCI-E, and has been completely replaced by PCI-E now. The newest card available for the AGP interface was the HD4670, the fastest was the HD3850. Neither are common, and neither is a cost effective upgrade, ESPECIALLY as they're both quite old and not very fast by today's standards. SLI (Scalable Link Interface) This is Nvidia's technology to use two or more graphics cards together for increased performance. All you need are two identical Nvidia cards (the memory size can be different but the core must be the same) and a motherboard that supports SLI. Most modern motherboards with more than one PCI-E slot will support SLI. Crossfire This is ATI's technology to use two or more graphics cards together for increased performance. Identical cards are not necessary but the SERIES must match, e.g. a 6850 and 6870 can be used together, but a 6850 and 6950 cannot. A Crossfire capable motherboard must be used. Almost all modern motherboards with two or more PCI-E slots support Crossfire. DX11 DirectX 11. This is the newest in Microsoft's DirectX software series. It allows for better, more realistic graphics, but only the newest cards support this. Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8 is required, earlier versions of Windows do not support DX11. Graphics cards from the AMD HD5850 and Nvidia GTX 4 series and newer support DX11. DX11 is coded in such a way that DX10 cards can run a subset of features, so if a card can run DX10 it can run DX11 games, just not with all the eye candy. DX10 DirectX 10. This is the previous release of DirectX, supported from Windows Vista onwards. It requires an AMD HD2xxx series of Nvidia GTX 2xx series card or newer. DDR2 memory Double Data Rate v2 memory. This is standard system RAM, used on low END video cards as video memory. Cards using this memory will be quite slow. GDDR memory Graphics Double Data Rate memory. Currently, there are GDDR3, GDDR4 and GDDR5 variations on the market. Newer versions are faster than older versions. Graphics cards Below is a list of graphics cards, from highest to lowest performance. This is not comprehensive, but covers most common cards from around 2006 onwards. Some cards will perform better or worse than others higher or lower on the list in certain applications, this list should only be taken as a general indicator of performance so for any specific questions, please either research or create a thread in the appropriate board, most likely hardware Radeon R9 290X GeForce GTX Titan Geforce GTX 690 Radeon HD 7990 GeForce GTX 780 GeForce GTX 770 GeForce GTX 680 GeForce GTX 590 Radeon HD 6990 Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280X (same card) GeForce GTX 670 GeForce GTX 760 Radeon HD 5970 Radeon HD 7950 Radeon R9 270X GeForce GTX 580 GeForce GTX 660 Ti Radeon HD 6970 GeForce GTX 480 GeForce GTX 570 Radeon HD 7870 Radeon HD 6950 GeForce GTX 660 Radeon HD 7850 Radeon HD 5870 GeForce GTX 295 GeForce GTX 470 GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST GeForce GTX 560 Ti GeForce GTX 560 Radeon HD 7790 Radeon R7 260X GeForce GTX 465 GeForce GTX 650 Ti GeForce GTX 460 Radeon HD 6870 GeForce GTX 460 v2 GeForce GTX 560 SE Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 4870 X2 Radeon HD 6850 Radeon HD 7770 Radeon HD 5830 Radeon HD 4890 GeForce GTX 645 GeForce GTX 550 Ti GeForce GTX 650 Radeon R7 250 Radeon HD 6770 Radeon HD 5770 Radeon HD 4870 Radeon HD 7750 GeForce GTS 450 Radeon HD 5750 Radeon HD 6750 GeForce GT 640 Radeon HD 4850 X2 GeForce GTX 285 GeForce GTX 280 GeForce GTX 275 Radeon HD 7670 GeForce GTX 260 Radeon HD 5670 Radeon HD 4770 Radeon HD 6670 Radeon HD 4850 Radeon HD 4830 Radeon HD 7570 GeForce GTS 250 GeForce 9800 GTX Radeon HD 3870 X2 GeForce GTS 240 GeForce 8800 Ultra GeForce 9800 GX2 GeForce 8800 GTX GeForce 8800 GTS GeForce 9800 GT GeForce 8800 GT Radeon HD 3850 X2 Radeon HD 3870 Radeon HD 2900 GeForce 8800 GS GeForce 9600 GT Radeon HD 6570 GeForce GT 630 GeForce GT 530 Radeon HD 5570 GeForce GT 240 GeForce GT 430 Radeon HD 3850 Radeon HD 4670 GeForce 9600 GSO Radeon HD 5550 GeForce GT 230 GeForce GT 620 GeForce 9600 Radeon HD 7470 GeForce GT 220 GeForce GT 520 Radeon HD 4650 GeForce GT 610 Radeon HD 7450 GeForce 510 Radeon HD 6450 GeForce 9500 Radeon HD 3670 GeForce 8600 Radeon HD 5450 Radeon HD 2600 GeForce 9400 GeForce 210 Radeon HD 4350 GeForce 8500 GT Radeon HD 3450 Radeon HD 2400 GeForce 8400 |
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