The choice of a video card: is everything so simple

Let's face it: the choice of a video card is one of the most difficult moments in the selection of components for a system unit. Regardless of whether you are buying a ready-made computer or going independently. A wise statement that each person has his own opinion, in this case, acquires a particular urgency. Therefore, it is useless to look for information on the Web, how to choose the video card for games correctly. It will be a subjective opinion of the author, even If the charts with test results are given. We will try the most loyal to all computer owners to answer the question of how to make the best choice of video card. We will take into account some nuances.

Before you go to the store and make your choice of video card, you need to determine in advance the range of tasks that are solved and will be solved on the computer. If it is mainly used to view Internet pages, play music and movies, and games 3-4 years old (including modern casual gaming applications), you can do with the built-in video card (AMD A8 or Intel Core i3 processors). As an alternative, you can consider the budget models of discrete video adapters, often superior to the characteristics of many embedded solutions.

If the computer is also used for modern games, then the choice of video card It is obvious that this is a productive discrete solution. Progress in this area is developing so rapidly that those models that were yesterday the flagships of the market can now be "on the sidelines", being sold at quite affordable prices. Because of this, the choice of a video game card must necessarily assume the study of the most current reviews and tests.

If we analyze the currently available data, we can give the following recommendations:

- A prerequisite for a good graphics card is a video memory standard GDDR-5 with a capacity of at least 1 GB;

- The minimum width of the memory bus is 128 bits (more is better);

- The supported version of DirectX must be at least 11;

- new consoles (data for March 2013) will install graphics solutions from AMD, given the future porting of games on PC, Radeon video cards are more promising.

Enthusiasts should pay attention to solutions with several graphics cores on the board. When making a choice, you can pay attention to the cost. Too cheap is, as a rule, budget models. Average price category - compromise Solutions, and expensive - the most modern.

Now about the subjective. As you know, modern games allow the introduction of settings that affect the quality of the image. This is anti-aliasing, optimization, etc. One user does not know how to play with the "ladder" on the diagonal lines (without smoothing), and the other does not notice them at all. As a result, the card that the first will consider obsolete, the second will perceive as a top card. In addition, for one, the most modern games are important, and the other does not even think about them, making up for lost time and playing in applications a year old. Therefore, the term "game graphics card" can be treated in two ways.