Video cards have some of the same features as the computers motherboard. It is basically a printed circuit board that has a processing unit and its own memory. It also contains a basic input output system (BIOS) that has diagnostic capabilities and retains the settings.
Function
Graphic card technology works in the following way. The hardware is connected to the motherboard where its receives electrical power and data. One of the vital components of the graphic card is the graphic processing unit (GPU,) which is sometimes called a visual processing unit. The card processes data by receiving information from the CPU. The typical computer screen contains over 1 million pixels that the computer must decode to produce an image. The image pixels are converted into images by the graphic card or the internal graphics processor. The images are sent by cable to the monitor.
Most graphic cards plug into a slot located on the motherboard; on older systems there are Advance Graphics Ports (AGP.) The newer model PCs have Peripheral Computer Interface Express (PCIe.) When selecting a graphics card, you must make sure that the card you purchase is supported by your system.
Graphics Processing Unit
The graphics processing unit (GPU) was introduced to the personal computer industry in August 1999. GPUs are integrated into motherboards and on video cards. As much as 90 percent of new personal computers and laptops have GPUs built into the motherboard. However, the faster/more powerful GPUs are integrated into video cards. Graphic processing units operate like computers' central processing units (CPU.) The GPU has special coding that makes it a high-performance processor. It's capable of performing complicated calculations and algorithm operations that are the requisite for producing graphics.
Memory
The graphic card processing unit continually produces images that must be stored. Often, the information consists of complete images that must be displayed at a particular time. The cards have their own RAM that is used for retaining data on each pixel of the image, including its location and color. The more powerful the video card, the more on board memory it carries. These cards function at a high rate of speed and operate a dual port technology. This enables the system to read from RAM and write simultaneously.
Less expense cards with a lower amount of memory may use a portion of the computer's memory to process larger image files. If multimedia or games are a high priority for your computer, the more memory your system has, the better it will perform. This is especially true with shared memory. In some cases, purchasing a graphics card with its own memory may be the best option.
Connection Methods
Graphic cards are typically connected to the computer's motherboard by one of three methods: the peripheral component interconnect (PCI,) advanced graphics port (AGP) and PCI Express (PCIe.) Each piece of hardware is capable of transferring data between the card and the motherboard.The video cards also have two connections for computer monitors, one each for LCD and VGA resolutions. Many graphic cards support TV displays, digital cameras and analog video cameras.
Choosing a Card
Most computer users can obtain the level of graphic support they need from the hardware already integrated into the motherboard of their PC or laptop. Surfing the Internet, e-mail, and downloading personal and business documents do not require the power you'll receive from graphic cards. People who are casual gamers may only need to invest in middle-of-the-road video cards. Individuals using a large amount of graphics and serious gamers should consider high-quality graphic cards.
The performance of graphic cards is measured in frames per second. This measurement denotes the images displayed per second. The higher the FPS, the faster the scrolling and animation features. Gaming enthusiasts will may need a minimum of 60 FPS. In contrast, the human eye processes about 25 FPS.
Other Considerations
Some factors that determine the power and speed of a graphics cards are: the bus speed, amount of RAM and the number of pipelines it has for data processing. One of the primary considerations when purchasing a graphics card is to ensure that it produces the best resolution possible for your monitor. Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) monitors must have the support for native resolution. Even if you have a Cathode Ray Tube, which does not have native resolution, always choose cards with support for the the highest resolution possible.
ATI Mobility Radeonâ„¢ HD 5870 GPU Specifications
1.04 billion 40nm transistors
TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture
800 Stream Processing Units
40 Texture Units
64 Z/Stencil ROP Units
16 Color ROP Units
GDDR5 memory interface
PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
DirectX® 11 support
Shader Model 5.0
DirectCompute 11
Programmable hardware tessellation unit
Accelerated multi-threading
HDR texture compression
Order-independent transparency
OpenGL 3.2 support1
Image quality enhancement technology
Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive anti-aliasing
16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
128-bit floating point HDR rendering
ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology2,3
Six independent display controllers
Drive up to six displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls, and video overlays
Display grouping
Combine multiple displays to behave like a single large display
ATI Stream acceleration technology
OpenCL support14
DirectCompute 11
Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling4,5
Native support for common video encoding instructions
ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ multi-GPU technology6
Dual GPU scaling
ATI Avivo HD Video & Display technology7
UVD 2 dedicated video playback accelerator
Advanced post-processing and scaling8
Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
Independent video gamma control
Dynamic video range control
Support for H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2
Dual-stream 1080p playback support9,10
DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP11
Max resolution: 2560x160012
Integrated DisplayPort output
Max resolution: 2560x160012
Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio
Max resolution: 1920x120012
Integrated VGA output
Max resolution: 2048x153612
3D stereoscopic display/glasses support13
Integrated HD audio controller
Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats
ATI PowerPlayâ„¢ power management technology7
Dynamic power management with low power idle state
Ultra-low power state support for multi-GPU configurations
Certified drivers for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP
Speeds & Feeds
Engine clock speed: 700 MHz
Processing power (single precision): 1.12 TeraFLOPS
Polygon throughput: 700M polygons/sec
Data fetch rate (32-bit): 112 billion fetches/sec
Texel fill rate (bilinear filtered): 28 Gigatexels/sec
Pixel fill rate: 11.2 Gigapixels/sec
Anti-aliased pixel fill rate: 44.8 Gigasamples/sec
Memory clock speed: 1.0 GHz
Memory data rate: 4.0 Gbps
Memory bandwidth: 64 GB/sec
TDP: 50 Watts
