November 16, 2009

Another popular upgrade option to revitalize your old PC is to give it a new video card. Doing so can be an inexpensive way to see a quick increase in performance, especially if you do a lot of gaming or watching movies. In some cases, the old video card or on-board GPU that is currently in use can not output the proper resolution for modern widescreen monitors. In these instances, a video card upgrade becomes almost a necessity.

While some off-the-shelf computers will come with an actual video card, most simply rely on the graphics capabilities of the motherboard, and the ones that do usually put in cheap and low-quality components. Chances are good you don't actually have a video card, but it is easy to tell if you do. If you know what a video card looks like, pop open your computer case and take a look. It will be plugged into one of the PCI slots, and will look something like the picture at the top of this article, but probably a lot smaller. Another way to tell is to open the Device Manager in Windows (right-click on My Computer, then select "Properties" then "Device Manager", or for Vista and 7, simply type "Device Manger in the search bar of the start menu and it will pop right up). Find the heading "Display adapters" and expand it, then double-click on what shows up. If the location is listed as anything on the PCI bus (it will say "PCI bus…"), then you have an actual card. If not, it's on your motherboard. If you have a graphic-capable motherboard and a video card, you'll see two things here. You just need to determine if at least one of them is a physical card.

Why go to all of this trouble? If you have an existing video card, you will need to uninstall it before you put a new one in. If not, you can just get a new one and install it directly. When you do, however, make sure to follow the instructions that came with the card carefully with regards to the order in which you should proceed. Some cards like the software installed first, and others require the card to be plugged in before doing anything else.

But before you uninstall your old card, you'll want to make sure you have a new one on hand. Decide on a budget and then shop around for some good deals. The two main video card chipsets are ATI and NVIDIA, and there are a bunch of different options and manufacturers for both. A best bet is to go to Newegg.com and do a search, and slowly narrow it down until you find one with features you want. If you're a hardcore gamer and are upgrading to be able to play a new game, you might want to check that game's hardware requirements to make sure you'll get what you're looking for. Keep in mind, though, that to play the latest and greatest video games you'll likely need more than a simple card upgrade. Faster processors, more ram, better hard drives and system cooling all play an important role in a solid gaming computer as well. Need help? That's what we're here for.

Hardware-revolution.com has a great article on the best video cards in certain price ranges as of November 2009. You can find it here.

Also, Tom's Hardware has a similar guide with a lot more information and test results, but it is back to July 2009. Read it here.

And if you want some more information about how video cards work and everything that goes into picking a good one, there is actually quite a bit of good info at Wikipedia.

Have any questions or something you'd like to know more about? Have a recommendation on a good video card for other readers? Leave a comment!

(Image courtesy of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.)