Video Cards

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Video Cards
By Ben Marsh
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Some History For Video Cards

• The first video card was the Monochrome Display
  Adapter (MDA). Introduced in 1981 by IBM. It had
  4 kilobytes of video memory. It also had a
  printer adapter.

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History Of Video Cards (Continued)

• In 1995 the first consumer 2D/3D cards were
  released, developed by Matrox, Creative, S3, ATI
  and others.

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History Of Video Cards (Continued Some More)

• 3dfx released its Voodoo Graphics chip in 1996.
  Powerful compared to other consumer graphics
  cards, introducing 3D effects into the market.

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History Of Video Cards (Yet Again Continued)

• The Voodoo2 was released in 1998. The Voodoo2
  required a separate onboard 2D Video card for non
  3D Gaming. The image quality passed the Voodoo by
  far. It had higher resolutions (1024x768). It had
  multitexturing support, resulting in four times
  better performance if supported.

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History Of Video Cards (Look Its Still Going)

• In 1995 Nvidia NV5 had double the onboard memory
  of the NV4 Video card, which was 16MB, (The NV5
  Had 32MB) It Also ran 70 faster than the NV4
  Card.

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History Of Video Cards (Hey Look Even More)

• 3dfx Was bought out by NVIDIA in December of
  2000. When NVIDIA did so the video card 3dfx was
  currently working on, the Rampage, was put to a
  halt.

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History Of Video Cards (It Doesnt Stop Here)

• In 2002 Matrox produced the Parhelia. It had
  256-Bit memory, it came clocked at 220MHz and had
  support for three monitors. It also was supposed
  to support Direct X9. It did not have support for
  Direct X9, and its retail price was 400.00.
  Double the price for the same Specs other
  competitors were producing.

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Video Cards Today

• Video Cards compared from 1981 to Now, in 2009
  have changed a lot. One video card now can
  support 4 monitors and are literally hundreds of
  thousands times faster and can handle so much
  more at once. If you compared the Monochrome
  Display Adapter to a Geforce GTX 275 there not
  even in the same ballpark. The MDA had 4kb of
  video memory while the Geforce GTX 275 has 1.7Gb
  (1792Mb) of video memory.

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Video Card Components Terminology

• Motherboard Connections Bring in data from the
  hard drive and electricity from the power supply.
• Memory Chips Hold the data during processing.
• Graphics Processor Chips Turn digital data into
  pixel information.
• Monitor Connections Send pixels to the monitor.

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Video Card Connections

• AGP Designed for use with 3d Graphics. AGP used
  a point to point channel for direct access to the
  main memory. It has a bandwidth of 266 Mbps to
  1.07 Gbps. To use this video card your
  motherboard needs to have a slot to support it.
  Most modern computers do support this type of
  card.
• PCI The oldest of the three types of video
  cards. Uses a shared bus to allow communication
  among different devices on the bus. It has a
  bandwidth of up to 133 Mbps to 512 Mbps. They can
  still offer decent performance if above 128Mbps.
• PCI-E PCI Express doubles the data transfer
  rates of a standard PCI card. PCI-E is on a two
  way serial connection, avoiding the slowdown of
  sharing a bus. It also uses other devices, like a
  network card to get greater output. PCI-E is
  compatible with some existing PCI systems. It is
  the replacement for AGP.

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What They Look Like
PCI-E

• PCI

AGP
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Video Card Monitor Connection Terminology

• Video Graphics Adapter VGA connects to analog
  monitors.
• Digital Visual Interface DVI connects to
  digital display devices, LCD monitors and digital
  projectors.
• S-Video S-Video used to connect a PC video card
  to a television, only capable of 480i or 576i
  resolution.
• High Definition Multimedia Interface HDMI
  connects a computer to your HDTV set.

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How The Video Card Works

• The Video Card is a circuit. It is responsible
  for processing video data from the CPU so that
  the monitor can understand it and create a
  picture on the screen. The Video Chipset, the
  Video Ram and the Digital Analog Converter are
  all things that are used to do this.

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How The Video Card Makes A Picture

• First, the Video data is transferred from the CPU
  to the Video cards chipset it then processes the
  data. The data is then transferred from the Video
  chipset to the Video Memory. The video memory
  stores the image. The data is then transferred
  from the video memory to the digital analog
  converter. The digital analog converter converts
  the image from digital data to analog data. The
  analog data is then transferred to the monitor
  through whatever cable it is using. For example,
  VGA, DVI, S-Video, or HDMI cables.

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What's a GPU?

• A graphics card processor is called a Graphics
  processing Unit (GPU). It is designed for
  performing mathematical and geometric
  calculations that are needed for graphics
  rendering. Basically its the graphics cards CPU.
  It Processes the data

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Who Makes GPUs

• ATI and NVIDIA produce a large amount of the GPUs
  on the market. To create better image quality
  there processors use
• Full scene anti aliasing (FSAA) Smoothes the
  edges of 3-D objects.
• Anisotropic filtering (AF) Makes images look
  more defined.

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Who Makes Video Cards?

• Asus, BFG, Chaintech, ECS, eVGA,
• Foxconn, Gigabytem, MSI, PNY, And XFX,

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Sources

• http//www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool
  s/item-details.asp?EdpNo4786531CatId3670
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Monochrome_Displa
  y_Adapter
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_card
• http//www.karbosguide.com/hardware/module7b1.htm
  ram
• http//www.overstock.com/guides/video-cards-buying
  -guide
• http//www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f22/gigabyte-an
  nounces-overclocked-geforce-gtx-260-video-card-639
  98/
• http//www.howstuffworks.com/graphics-card.htm
• http//www.computer-hardware-explained.com/images/
  graphics-card9.jpg
• http//www.onlinecomputertips.com/hardware/video_c
  ards.html
• http//www.maximumpc.com/article/features/graphics
  _extravaganza_ultimate_gpu_retrospective?page02C
  2
• http//www.essaysample.com/essay/003419.html
• http//www.tomshardware.com/forum/246796-33-what-m
  anufacturer

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• THE END