Everyone has to have the latest hardware, within a certain price range. Truthfully, Internet and email are all that most computer users care about. The dirty little secret is that computers several years ago performed both tasks very well, long before your current computer was a gleam in a geek's eye. You don't need all that power, graphics, and muscle for just Internet and email. I can do all that on my iPod Touch, so why do I even need a PC?

If your PC is used for more than just surfing and firing off emails like you are Rambo with a send button for a gun, you may be a gamer, a graphic designer or photoshop nut, not to mention one of the other 408 high end uses for a computer. For many of them, you need a graphics card, sometimes called a video card. We break down what you need to know about this strange animal in this feature.

 

Graphics card, video card, what is the difference?

A video card is what you need to be able to see what is on your computer. Without one, your monitor would be black and not showing anything — not very useful! A graphics card is technically an add-in computer component that will give you extended performance above and beyond the video card you have. While a video card must be present to use your computer, a graphics card is optional and only required for high end video applications.

Every computer comes with an on-board video chip, hardwired to the motherboard in most cases. This is sometimes referred to by geeks as a video chipset, which is the controller in your computer to figure out what video it needs to show when you monitor stands there tapping its foot, saying "where's the picture, gimme the picture, Frank!" Like a TV, you have to have a DVD player or some other input to feed the screen with. Video chipsets and on-board video connectors do essentially the same thing, only they interpret the source, which in this case is any video coming from the computer or its peripherals.

 

Why you may not even need a graphics card

You may not need a graphics card for your computer, unless you are gaming, running a 3D drawing and drafting program, 3DSMax, AutoCAD, Revit, Bryce, MAYA, or other rendering program. Gaming is the most frequent use and reason to purchase a graphics card. Games eat video resources for lunch, and many games won't even run without the required graphics card. There are many special graphics technologies that exist on graphics cards that do not ship with most computers out of the box. Transform and Lighting, DirectX, PhysX, Programmable Shaders, Ansiotropic Filtering, Vertex and Pixel Shader, Anti-aliasing, and many more. Games and rendering applications require these techonologies. Nearly all games give the minimum graphics card requirements on the box, so you know if yours can handle the new hotness of Call of Duty 37 (we're up to Call of Duty 4, but give them time, they will get to 37 someday) for example.

 

What a graphics card actually does for you: GPU vs. CPU

The reason graphics cards are great, besides the obviously stated technologies that your regular system can't run, is they operate almost as their own computer within a computer. Just as your computer's CPU (Central Processing Unit, also called your processor) is the main hub for crunching numbers and taking names, your graphics card (if a modern one) will have its own processor, called a GPU, or Graphics Processing Unit. Most graphics cards also have some amount of on-board memory. If you see a spec like 256 MB GeForce 9000, the 256 MB is how much memory is on the graphics card itself. This has to match or exceed the amount listed on the game box as well. For example, World of Warcraft, a wildly opular online game has system requirements of 32 MB VRAM (video memory) and an ATI Radeon 7200 or nVidia GeForce 2 series or better card. Those requirements are very low for modern games, as cards these days have 512 MB memory and 1 GB or 2 GB on the high end. Having so much hardware on the graphics card itself will make it easier on your computer's processor, not to mention make it all faster, because the tough job of actually generating the display is offloaded to the graphics card dedicated to that task. Most games haven't caught up to needing that amount of graphics-dedicated muscle, but they will soon. Mythbusters put together a video for Nvidia to illustrate the difference between a CPU and a GPU using paintballs and the Mona Lisa, which is about as fun a computer science lesson we've seen:

 

How to shop for a new graphics card

One primary consideration when shopping for a graphics card is to make sure it supports the type of connectors on the back of your card that your monitor or TV supports. The oldest connector is VGA, and it was the standard for a long time, until newer standards replaced it a few short years ago. Now we have DVI, which is the white-colored connector that has tons of little square-looking holes in it, resembling an office building with windows almost. S-video is another older option on graphics cards, and it is generally used to connect your computer to your TV for a media center type setup. Newer cards come with an HDMI connector, which is most often used as a connection to newer HDTVs and other higher-end devices. Some laptops even have on-board HDMI for high def goodness on the go (check out our guide to home audio and video connections for more information on the connectors mentioned here).

 

Another important consideration is what type of slot in your motherboard the card fits in, and to make sure you have an open slot available. The most common technologies in use today are AGP and PCI Express, with less common slots being PCI or PCI-X (the latter of which will be compatible with a regular PCI slot). As long as you have a free slot (or can free one up) that matches the type of card you buy, your machine should be able to run the graphics card you purchase, though occasionally there may be driver issues to solve or contend with on your platform of choice. 

The other thing to consider is whether or not you want a TV Tuner graphics card. This type of card will allow you to pick up OTA (over the air) local channels, but will nearly always have a standard coaxial connector to plug in your dish or cable TV provider right into your PC, so you can record shows just like a TiVo or other Digital Video Recorder (DVR).

There are some other advanced types of video cards we won't go into depth on here that we should at least mention for curiosity sake. They are the nVidia SLI, and the ATI Crossfire. These both deal with linking two or more graphics cards together in a single machine to create beautiful and uncontrollable graphics power and mayhem for insane gaming. Much like when geeks procreate, only less messy.

ATI vs nVidia

Two companies battle for the top spot in the graphics world, nVidia, and ATI. Both sides have reasons why they are better, but it really comes down to the specifics, and the fact that your personal preference is the best judge. They both have great products, so doing a little research into the kind of card you need is a wise move to ensure you get exactly what you need.

How to install a new video card

Be sure to have the right drivers from the CD that came in the box with the card or from the manufacturer's website before you install a new card. Work in a clean environment and be sure to ground yourself before touching the computer's components by touching something metal. Remove the computer's case, remove your old graphics card if necessary, and seat the new card into the appropriate slot inside your PC. Close up the case and connect your monitor cable to the new card's display port you just installed, then run the driver install, from CD or download, and restart your PC. To verify that it worked, go to Control Panel then Display, and the name of your graphics card should appear on the first screen that comes up.

We hope we've helped you get started figuring out if you need to upgrade to a dedicated graphics card and if so, how to go about finding the right card for you. If you have more questions or an idea for another feature you'd like us to do in this area, please let us know in the comments!

[CC Photos by gxti, s_e_i, and viagallery]

More beginner PC guides on Obsessable

• PC 101: An overview of the components inside your computer
• RAM 101: Why you need more of it
• Computer cases 101: More than just a PC guts container
• Power supplies 101: The juice in a computer breakfast
• Peripheral Connections 101: USB and Bluetooth standards
• Solid state drives 101: Why should you care?