ok i figure this kinda article should be here, there are a lot of myths that people who want to buy a graphic Card belive in (specialy in SL) heres the worst one of them;
* If a certain VGA have a lot of memory its always better than a card with a low amount of memory (even the retailers try to push this thought)
This is completely wrong never, i mean never ask a retailer for a VGA card based on the memory, ill explain whats wrong with this, the graphics Memory is where the Frames that renderd from the GPU are stored before sending them to the RAMDAC (RAMDAC in simple this is responsible for displaying these image on ur Display)as u know bigger images need more space...so as the resolution of the games or what ever that u use increases the more Frame Buffer u need to store them (or VGA Memory) and thats the only reason u need More memory.
* the main component that decide the speed of a graphics card is its GPU or VPU (graphics processing Unit) so the first thing u have to look for a VGA is its Model Name. and the Speed of its GPU..in general more the GPU clock speed the better (there are other factors like the amount of pixel shaders and vertex shaders, stream processors....in case of pixel and vertex shaders more is better....but stream processors are different ull have to look for reviews to find out wich card is faster)
* The second thing u should look for is the speed of the VRAM the card use (GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4) they vary significantly between models in general more the speed of the VRAM more the speed of the Graphics card (cuz of the increase of the bandwidth) ram speed determine the amount of frames that a GPU can transfer to the RAM in a second (mesured in Gigabits per second) GDDR2<GDDR3<GDDR4 this is in general but the clocks of these VRAM changes significantly so a 2000 MHz GDDR3 is faster than a 1800MHz GDDR4 (but GDDR4 is more power efficient)
* The memory size comes next this really depends on the Screen Resolution u use for gaming....if ur using 1024 x 768 to 1600 x 1200 ur just fine with a card with 256MB of RAM in general (but some games with huge textures can require more ram but they are very rare and useless for this resolution range) if ur thinking goinf even higher ull need more VRAM 320MB or 512MB (or even 1GB if ur in to very very high resolutions and use multiple graphics cards)
* the last thing is the Graphics Bus (this determines the speed the graphic card communicate withe CPU and the RAM and all other system components)..its very simple PCIE 2 > PCIE 1> AGP > PCI
PCIE2 supporting mobos are very rare and expensive these days so ull be doing just fine with e a PCIE ver1 card, and also PCIE 2 cards are pin compatible with PCIE 1.1 so ull have no problem there.
here are all Model Names of Nvidia cards with the respecting GPU. performance of these cards Increase as u go down the tables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
this is all ATI (now AMD) video cards with the respecting GPU. performance of these cards Increase as u go down the tables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units
so the next time u go to buy a VGA (or a video card, graphic card what ever u call it) remember above tips and do study the the Wikipedia articles iwe mentioned above have fun....
* If a certain VGA have a lot of memory its always better than a card with a low amount of memory (even the retailers try to push this thought)
This is completely wrong never, i mean never ask a retailer for a VGA card based on the memory, ill explain whats wrong with this, the graphics Memory is where the Frames that renderd from the GPU are stored before sending them to the RAMDAC (RAMDAC in simple this is responsible for displaying these image on ur Display)as u know bigger images need more space...so as the resolution of the games or what ever that u use increases the more Frame Buffer u need to store them (or VGA Memory) and thats the only reason u need More memory.
* the main component that decide the speed of a graphics card is its GPU or VPU (graphics processing Unit) so the first thing u have to look for a VGA is its Model Name. and the Speed of its GPU..in general more the GPU clock speed the better (there are other factors like the amount of pixel shaders and vertex shaders, stream processors....in case of pixel and vertex shaders more is better....but stream processors are different ull have to look for reviews to find out wich card is faster)
* The second thing u should look for is the speed of the VRAM the card use (GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4) they vary significantly between models in general more the speed of the VRAM more the speed of the Graphics card (cuz of the increase of the bandwidth) ram speed determine the amount of frames that a GPU can transfer to the RAM in a second (mesured in Gigabits per second) GDDR2<GDDR3<GDDR4 this is in general but the clocks of these VRAM changes significantly so a 2000 MHz GDDR3 is faster than a 1800MHz GDDR4 (but GDDR4 is more power efficient)
* The memory size comes next this really depends on the Screen Resolution u use for gaming....if ur using 1024 x 768 to 1600 x 1200 ur just fine with a card with 256MB of RAM in general (but some games with huge textures can require more ram but they are very rare and useless for this resolution range) if ur thinking goinf even higher ull need more VRAM 320MB or 512MB (or even 1GB if ur in to very very high resolutions and use multiple graphics cards)
* the last thing is the Graphics Bus (this determines the speed the graphic card communicate withe CPU and the RAM and all other system components)..its very simple PCIE 2 > PCIE 1> AGP > PCI
PCIE2 supporting mobos are very rare and expensive these days so ull be doing just fine with e a PCIE ver1 card, and also PCIE 2 cards are pin compatible with PCIE 1.1 so ull have no problem there.
here are all Model Names of Nvidia cards with the respecting GPU. performance of these cards Increase as u go down the tables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
this is all ATI (now AMD) video cards with the respecting GPU. performance of these cards Increase as u go down the tables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units
so the next time u go to buy a VGA (or a video card, graphic card what ever u call it) remember above tips and do study the the Wikipedia articles iwe mentioned above have fun....
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(GDDR4 has very relaxed timings, so to get the same performance, you need like 2.2-2.4GHz GDDR4. Why do you think nVidia still haven't opted for GDDR4? 
)
