Graphics Cards Review

In this review site, you’ll find side-by-side comparisons and detailed reviews of the best graphics cards, along with articles and tips to help you get the best video rendering capabilities out of your computer. Whether you are a gamer or work in the graphics design/video rendering fields, the base model video chipset in your PC just isn’t good enough. To be able to work or game quickly with the optimal FPS (frames per second), you’ll have to upgrade your system. For those new to building a video and graphics intensive system, make sure you check out our articles on graphics cards. Our articles show you how to build a gaming PC that can handle a high-end graphics card, since many older systems won't be able to handle the latest GPUs, and we also break down the leading graphics cards such as the AMD Radeon HD 6990, the Nvidia GTX 590 and  the ATI Radeon HD 5970.

Graphics Cards: What to Look For

There is a lot to graphics cards, but we've managed to break them down and define the key aspects so you can find the one that works for you. They broke down into the following categories.

GPU/Interface
The graphics processing unit (GPU) is basically a second CPU but is designed to offload all the graphics rendering from the CPU and process it on the graphics card. Obviously, these are made to handle intense graphical workloads, which frees up your CPU to run all the other aspects of applications. What does that mean for you? Faster processing! The fastest processor on the market would bog down and overheat if it tried to process graphics in addition to everything else. The main thing you're looking for on the GPU is the clock speeds.

Video Memory
This criteria goes hand in hand with the GPU; you also want a fast clock speed. The amount of memory is also crucial because it is the GPU’s own RAM. Like your CPU needs RAM, the GPU needs its own video memory to reach higher speeds. Also, the larger the bus width and bandwidth, the more information can be processed simultaneously.

Rendering Technologies
This criterion refers to the various technologies that are integrated in to the graphics cards. It’s hard to say which ones are better than others, because opinion-based prejudice runs rampant when it comes to graphics cards and which is the best. Truth be told, they’re all very similar and do basically the same things. Also, unless a game or application is built specifically with some of the technologies, they often don’t make a great deal of difference. Others do make a difference, however. Nvidia is known for their CUDA technology and it has been a thorn in the side of ATI for a while now. On the other end, ATI’s Eyefinity technology looks pretty impressive when you stretch your desktop across 6 screens and maintain HD quality.

Supported API
Application Programming Interface (API) is the interface that enables interaction with software. Software that wants to use the GPU has to be compatible with the API of the card. For example, if your card only supports DirectX 9 and you buy a game or application that requires DirectX 11, you will have to upgrade your card in order to run it.

Display Interface
These are the connections that the graphics card uses to connect to a monitor. DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort all support the higher resolutions, with dual channel DVI as the most common. It is important to match up these connections with the ones your monitor has. If your monitor doesn’t have the same connections then you have to get a converter cable which may result in lower resolutions.

Additional Features
These are just a few extra goodies that aren’t extremely important and actually vary depending on the board manufacturer (ASUS, EVGA, Sapphire, etc). The information on our site is from the base models of each manufacturer. Typically, board manufacturers will have additional versions with multiple fans, liquid cooling and other variations.

If you put all of these things together, you get phenomenal graphics cards. Unfortunately most cards excel in one or two areas and fall short in another so there isn’t really a perfect one. We'll help you find the one that meets your expectations and fits in your budget. The better the card, the more it’ll cost, but the results can be well worth it.

At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don’t Have To.™