When purchasing a computer with the intent of playing computer games, it is important to get a computer with the best video card within your price range for the best game performance. Even if you do not have physical access to both cards you want to compare, you can get a good idea of their performance with the proper research.
Instructions
1. Read reviews of both video cards online and compare performance statistics at popular graphics comparison websites. Video cards are a huge market since avid computer gamers are always looking to max out their system performance. As a result, there are many sites with in depth information and comparisons of video cards, witch run cards through various benchmark tests. (See Resource three for a card comparison tool.)
2. Compare technical specifications of the two cards. The card's core speed, shader speed, memory speed, and memory capacity are important measures of card performance. The core speed is how fast the graphics processing unit on the card works and memory speed is how fast the memory built into the card can transfer data to the graphics processing unit. The memory capacity is the total physical memory available on the card, which can be though of as RAM that is dedicated to the video card itself. For frame of reference, the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT, a popular baseline gaming video card has a core speed of 540 MHZ, a shader speed of 1190 MHZ, a memory speed of 700 MHZ, and 256MB of total memory. If you wish to purchase a card that will run most games in 2009, look for one with specs that at least match the 8600 GT.
3. Perform your own test of both cards. Comparing card specifications and using comparison tools should give you a solid idea of how well a certain card will perform versus another, but if you have access to both cards, you can compare them yourself. Simply use both of the cards to play your favorite games and note how the graphics look and the frame rate. Certain games have video test tools within the graphics options that will test frame rate. If there is not an obvious difference in graphical appearance or frame rate, the cards are likely fairly equivalent in power, or else the games are not graphically intense enough to challenge the either card. Testing games on a very graphically intense game can often yield the most useful results.
Tags: both cards, core speed, frame rate, memory speed, video card, access both