Quick question

[Nekriss421]

I'm essentially building a computer, and i have a few questions about how things work. I would like to know what determines the power of a graphics card and the same of a motherboard. What are some good of each? if you could answer my questions i would greatly appreciate it. I figured i would ask here since you seem like you know what you're talkin about and i admire that. Thanks again.

 

[aliasaid]

for a motherboard, you can't say whether its powerful or not, because it simply brings all the different parts of the computer together, the "powerful" part comes from components like the CPU, video card, etc.. different motherboards come in different sockets and have many different features and thats why there are so many out there with varying prices..


as for video cards, you have things like core clock speed, memory size, memory speed, number of pipelines, pixel shaders, memory bandwidth, and a whooole lot of other things that make up a video card... but even the biggest expert won't really know how good a video card is until its tested and benchmarked. thats how we know what video cards are good and which aren't so good, we look up benchmarks made by various websites testing different cards against eachother.

 

[Syrillian]

To aliasaid: Well said.

For CPU's go with an AM2 (AMD) or a Core 2 Duo (Intel). The Core 2 Duo is the reigning champ when it comes to "powerful". When it comes to CPU's don't use the Speed (GHz) as a factor to decide, read some benchmark reviews and decide for yourself.

Video Card's on the other hand can be ranked (only in part) by GPU and RAM speed, there are other factors, but they can be confusing. Also, remember to check the quantity of Pixel Pipelines, more is faster.

Happy shopping!

 

[Nekriss421]

thanks for the info! i read the Wikipedia graphics card thing, but it told me a lot of things i didnt understand. Could you please explain how a graphics card works in detailed Laymans terms? thanks!

 

[Nekriss421]

bump