Display Cards

More than the speed of your processor,

more than the amount of RAM you have, you will feel the impact of the type of display or

the video card you have on your PC.

Why? If you have waited for those

torturous screen redraws to be completed, or have tried to play 3D games, you already know

what we’re talking about.

Display quality on your monitor

is determined by two factors–screen resolution and color depth. The higher the

resolution, the sharper the image, and the more the screen area you have to work on.

Similarly, more the color depth, richer the graphics that are displayed. There’s a

limit to the maximum resolution any monitor can display. For a given monitor, the maximum

number of colors that can be displayed and the maximum color depth possible are inversely

related to each other, and are dependant on the amount of video RAM on your graphics card.

That is, for a given amount of graphics RAM, the higher the color depth you choose, the

lower the resolution you get.

alt="display.jpg (13735 bytes)" align="left">Frankly, we

would not recommend a 1 MB card or even a 2 MB one to anyone on Windows. The minimum you

should have is 4 MB. The difference you would experience is tremendous. Serious gamers and

those working with graphics or CAD should seriously consider 8 MB.

If you are into 3D gaming, get at

least 8 MB of video RAM. Or better still, get a 3D card which will give you faster, more

realistic effects.

Again, when you go out to purchase a

video card, you will come across two choices–PCI or AGP. AGP is supposed to give you

faster graphics throughput than PCI. But the jury still seems to be out on that.