How do you know if a video card is a good one?

Like how do you know if the video card is good for some games, but not all. how you know if the video card is veryy fast, and has good graphics... plz be speicfic!! TY in adnvance|||hi mate

good question ...however there are many ways to evaluate a graphic cards performance..and these can include reviews,specifications and benchmarks....for example reviews from websites such as the excellent "toms hardware "( http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/#redir ) have reliable reviews on all the latest graphics cards and you can also check older cards aswell

specifications are one of the best methods of checking the performance of a particular card but what specifications should you look for ? ....well i allways look at five main specs and these are

1.core clock : sometimes known as the "engine clock " and this is the speed at which the gpu ( graphics processing unit ) operates at....this is measured in "megahertz"(mhz) and the higher the better,,go for nothing lower than 500mhz

2.memory clock : this is the speed at which the video memory operates at...and is measured using two values...theres the standard memory clock and then theres the "ddr effective" memory clock....the standard memory clock is the default speed of the memory and has not been double or quad pumped...however the ddr effective speed is calculated by the type of memory the card supports ,,so for example if a card has 256mb of gddr3 memory running at 600mhz then its ddr effective memory clock will be 1200mhz.....however if the same card supports gddr5 memory then its ddr effective speed will be 2800mhz

3. memory bit interface : The number of bits wide (and the organization) of the memory bus that connects your GPU to your video card RAM. ...dont go for anything lower than 128bit...however for decent and smooth performance go for at least 256bit

4.memory bandwidth : this is calculated by multiplying the memory bit interface with the memory clock speed ...and because of this the memory bandwidth is a quick and precise method of quickly checking the performance of a particular graphic card....and with the performance of todays cards dont accept anything below 40gb/sec

5) shader processors : these are the graphic units that do all the rendering thats needed in todays games..and the more shader processors the smoother and faster the games will run ... you should accept nothing less than 64 shader processors ....note : ati calculate their shader processors differently so when looking at a ati radeon card theres 3 unit to every 1 nvidia shader processors, these are the main specs for look for..get these right and you will be fine

then theres benchmarks....this is a good way of checking out how a card performs with a specific game...and you can then get a good idea of how well it will run on your system.... one of the best benchmarks around are the "3dmark" series ( http://www.futuremark.com/ )

and finally theres a website called " system requirements lab" ( http://cyri.systemrequirementslab.com/CY… ) which allows you to choose a game and then scan your pc to see if your pc "can run it "....select the game you want from the drop down list and then click the "can you run it " button ...then after allowing a active x add-on to run and a small scan of your pc it will return a report ,,and show you if your system can run the game ...if it fails anything then it will recommend the future upgrade

i hope this helps,any problems let me know

good luck mate !|||you got to see the memory ram it brings , this way when you play game your pc don't use the motherboard ram , it will use the card ram , check these cards here , and look the different http://savenow.webs.com/videocard.htm , enjoy|||Looking at underlying specs can sometimes be misleading, since the technologies from ATI and Nvidia are so different yet performance can be very similar. You can be sure that an ATI card with 200 stream processors is better than an ATI card with 80 stream processors, but not necessarily an Nvidia card. Same thing with memory bandwidth; The 128-bit Radeon 4770 is faster than the 256-bit GeForce 9800GT. And total video RAM is rarely much of an indicator of anything.



http://www.hardware-revolution.com/mista…



The best way to know which cards are good, bad or simply overpriced for what they offer is by checking reviews and comparisons of the models you're considering, like these:



http://www.techspot.com/review/240-ati-r…

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best…



Xbitlabs, Anandtech, Techspot, Hothardware and Tom's Hardware are all good sources.