Performance gains with a high end graphics card

[Distorted Vision]

Can someone please tell me what are the performance and feature gains with
using a high end graphics card rather than using a low / medium spec one
like my 128Mb one.

Perhaps someone can post some urls to screenshots / video?

Cheers!

 

[Dustin Harper]

In 2D (desktop, etc) you won't notice much difference, if at all. The 3D
apps will have a higher performance gain.

 

[Distorted Vision]

3D apps such as?

In 2D (desktop, etc) you won't notice much difference, if at all. The 3D
apps will have a higher performance gain.

 

[Malke]

Can someone please tell me what are the performance and feature gains with
using a high end graphics card rather than using a low / medium spec one
like my 128Mb one.

Perhaps someone can post some urls to screenshots / video?

Cheers!

It really depends on what you use your computer for whether having a
better graphics card is worth it. If you only do word processing, surf
the Internet, email, and perhaps occasionally work with photos from your
digital camera then a mid-level card with 128MB of RAM on it is just
fine. You probably wouldn't see much difference between it and a card
with 256 or 512MB of RAM and a faster GPU unless you were a gamer or
working with something really intense like Photoshop.

I can't give you any pictures but a good place to look for information
like this is www.tomshardware.com. Dr. Tom has always done in-depth
reviews of video cards.


Malke

 

[R. McCarty]

Not performance related, but one significant advantage with Vista
is having your Video card connected to your monitor using a DVI
output. I've done side-by-side comparisons and the difference in
quality between a standard VGA and DVI output is easy to see.
Recent video cards now come with Dual-DVI outputs for multiple
monitor use and several I've seen are now shipping with 1.0 Gig
of DDR3 memory on them.

On newer GPUs the transistor count has surpassed CPUs, so it's
almost necessary to add an adjacent exhaust fan beside the video
card to help vent out the heat it generates.

 

[Dustin Harper]

3D Gaming is the best example. Sure, the 2D Aero Glass uses DX and 3D,
but the simple (9700Pro 128MB, etc) are enough to run it smoothly.

Dustin Harper

 

[Scott]

3D apps such as?

Well in my case I've got two computers here running Vista Ultimate.

In the case of the former it won't run my fave "Really Slick
Screensavers" (www.reallyslick.com).

The former has no graphics card. The onboard video (ATI Radeon Express
200 w/shared 128 MB RAM) runs Vista Aero *very* nicely, but as soon as
I tried to launch the above mentined (3-D intensive) screensavers
things got rather ugly.

So *without* a video card this box is excellent for 2-D (+ all Vista
bells and whistles) but any 3-D apps are out of the question.

Since the primary user of this box rarely does anything beyond
websufing, e-mail, word processing and light photo editing, it's not
an issue.

The other box (my primary one) has a 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
video card and runs the previously mentioned screensavers very well.
I'm not into games, so I can't speak for their performance.