Choose the Best Graphics Card Technology

The graphics card is the heart and soul of your computer. A powerful technology graphics card can mean the difference between a sensory feast and an interactive slideshow. Although upgrading your graphics board is one of the simplest ways to produce noticeable improvements in your PC’s gaming technology performance and other graphical issues, it’s also one of the most confusing: Throwing extra money at the problem isn’t always the best solution, and you have lots of products to choose from. 

 Only two major graphics-processor technologies manufacturers exist these days. In the green corner is Nvidia, which serves up powerful, energy-hungry hardware. In the red corner is AMDhttp://www.amd.com/uk/Pages/AMDHomePage.aspx, whose offerings are competitive but generally less taxing on your electricity bill and your wallet.

Each company does things a bit differently. Consider support for multiple graphics cards: AMD calls its technology CrossFire and Nvidia calls its version SLI, but both allow you to pair up identical graphics cards to eke a bit more performance out of your PC. You won’t enjoy a 100 percent performance gain by slapping another card into your rig, but you will see a worthwhile speedup if you can afford the cost--and if your motherboard (and power supply) can support more than one card.Graphics cards have quite a bit more to offer than just making your games pretty. If you want multiple displays, look to AMD, which offers Eyefinity t: A single AMD card can support up to three monitors, which can be a boon if you have plenty of desk space and you like to give games as much real estate as you can muster. Nvidia’s graphics cards are limited to two screens only; if you want more, generally you’ll need to run two cards in SLI.Another important consideration, for some gamers, is 3D. Both AMD and Nvidia make graphics cards that are capable of 3D video playback and 3D gaming technology, but Nvidia’s 3D Vision ecosystem has been around for years, and you’ll find various games and hardware built with Nvidia’s technology in mind.

Technology Trends

SYNTHETIC BENCHMARKS
Test	Setting	AMD Radeon HD 6870	Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
3DMark 11	Performance	4147	4479
	Extreme	1339	1484
Unigine Heaven 2.5	1680 by 1050	39.6 fps	44.2 fps
	1680 by 1050, 4xAA	34.2 fps	36.1 fps
	1920 by 1080	35.7 fps	36.5 fps
	1920 by 1080, 4xAA	30.6 fps	29.8 fps
REAL-WORLD GAMES
Test	Setting	AMD Radeon HD 6870	Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Crysis 2	1680 by 1050	42.3 fps	47.3 fps
	1680 by 1050, 4xAA	40.3 fps	43.5 fps
	1920 by 1080	36.8 fps	40.6 fps
	1920 by 1080, 4xAA	34.9 fps	37.1 fps
Dirt 3	1680 by 1050	57.5 fps	68.0 fps
	1680 by 1050, 4xAA	54.2 fps	61.6 fps
	1920 by 1080	51.7 fps	61.5 fps
	1920 by 1080, 4xAA	49.1 fps	55.8 fps

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