What do I look for when searching for a new video card?

I'm looking for a new video card. I've been searching online at newegg.com and I'm trying to see what is good. But the question is what should I look for when shopping for a video card? I know I look for price and slot-type (AGP. PCI-Ex). I also see pixel pipelines, core clock, memory clock, and memory interface but I don't know what they mean. What do all of those mean and what SHOULD I BE LOOKING FOR in the card's specs?|||Well, you're on the right track...



I'll post a link to a gamespot article that addresses your question perfectly. However, if you really want a quick answer I'll try to answer them here.



Beyond making sure you have the right type of bus interface (AGP, PCI-x, PCI-e), you probably want to look at the GPU chipset, core speed, and number of pixel-pipelines.



Also, going with DUAL video cards will give the top performance (with with NVidia's SLI, or ATI's Crossfire). However, if you don't have that kind of money to spend, then stick with single cards.



Personally, when shopping around for graphics cards, I still look at the core clock speed, and number of pixel pipelines. And the rule is, the more there is, the better the card.



I would highly recommend taking a look at the article, as they do a really good job in their article describing what to look for in any graphics card.



Hope this helps! Good Luck!|||Besides what you know to look for, look what Shader Model it supports. Go for something that supports v 3.0, this will make a huge difference in games. Core clock and memory clock refer to how fast the chip executes on the video card, and how fast memory can move on the video card respectively. Pixel pipelines refers to shader stuff, it's the number of instructions it can pipeline on the card. More is not always better, it depends on the shader that is running the graphics card.



Vertex and Pixel Shaders are a very complicated topic, but basically they are programs that run on your video card that process 3D data and textures. They make things look pretty, and do a lot of other complicated stuff, but for games they are the most important feature.|||Just goto www.tomshardware.com and look at the video benchmarks. That will tell you the performance of the video card in question.