Should We Still Invest In High End Pc Graphics Cards?
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A new generation of graphics cards has emerged since the beginning of the year.It is time to confront. How best to indulge in video games, today and tomorrow?
The question arises, given the number of models sold at less than 250 Dollars and can run the vast majority of existing securities ( Dragon Age 2 , Crysis 2 , Duke Nukem Forever , Rift , etc..) Full HD (1 920 points by 1080). The GeForce GTX 460 1GB or even the Radeon HD 6870 are good examples.
For the record the most amazing possible, with maximum detail, visual effects and video filters such as anti-aliasing , the gamer must invest in a seasoned expensive card to play on its screen 24, 27 or 30 inches in peace. Especially if he has one of these new screens capable of displaying 2560 by 1600 points.
Roughly double to generate information relative to a Full HD panel! Do not forget the stereoscopic 3D! Nvidia’s marketing services and – more recently – the ones from AMD are doing everything to convince us to watch movies and play in relief on our PC or on the living room TV.
3D still worth
However, at present, only the GeForce cards allow you to play stereoscopic 3D, using a kit sold separately (3D Vision) and a 120 Hz screen compatible. Perfect compatibility with the method is assured only for a dozen titles on the market.
For all other video games, follow the recommendations of driver settings so that the magic happens. Regarding the HD 3D AMD, it is now impossible to find active glasses and screens on the market. In addition, the implementation requires third-party … Well, not simple, even for the 3D enthusiasts.In terms of GPGPU functions (graphics card offloads the PC processor computing certain operations), democratization is done discreetly. In addition to highly specialized solutions (such as Badaboom encoder for GeForce), publishers of software installation / conversion / video encoding technologies have introduced CUDA (Nvidia) Stream and ATI (AMD) in their applications.
This is the case CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 6 of which can take advantage of both technologies. So, encodings-transcoding are accelerated because the central processor of the PC is supported by the graphics chip to calculate the frames and other image conversion. All this happens transparently to the user, because the conversion engines are optimized to best exploit the resources at their disposal.
Not in every PC
No way to integrate these monsters in a computer brand a year ago bought 600 or 700 euros!It is not certain that you have the firepower needed to exploit these high-end graphics chips.To get to play properly, plus a powerful card, you need a good processor (dual heart at least), lots of RAM (4GB minimum) and, especially, a mighty power.
The minimum recommended for high-end cards in this case is a model delivering 600 watts, with at least two doses PCI-Express 6-pin. The high-end cards using up to 375 W alone! It is crucial that your case is large and airy. Because some are more than 28 cm in length and can reach 80 ° C at full load!
Conclude with the connection. Graphics cards integrating AMD chips are mostly equipped with DVI, HDMI full size and mini DisplayPort. For Nvidia, we find that the DVI and mini-HDMI or mini DisplayPort, like the GTX 590. However, manufacturers (MSI, Asus …) can make other choices when integrating the GPU. Remember to check!
