VIDEO CARDS cteckpc.com

One of the easiest and least expensive ways to increase the performance of your computer is to upgrade the video card. There are many different brands of video cards available on the market today. ATI and NVIDIA are two of them.

TYPE OF VIDEO CARD TO USE:

What kind of video card can you use to upgrade your machine with? You must find out if your computer has a VGA slot, or a PCI slot or for the newer computers a PCI X16 slot. Most proprietary computers or the less expensive computers have an integrated video card. Even though these computers have Onboard or Integrated Video, they still might have a PCI slot available for expansion. Ask if they have either a PCI Express 16 Slot avialable or an AGP slot. If they do have one of these slots, then you can upgrade your computers video later. If the motherboard does not have an AGP or a PCI Express slot available you might be able to use a regular PCI card, but using a PCI video card is less responsive.

By upgrading the video card, you help free up system resources which in turns helps speed up your system.

If you plan to upgrade your onboard video by installing a new video card, you may need to make changes to the BIOS. There are different settings for onboard video in the BIOS that need to be disabled. When your system already has an Integrated Video Card, you may need to consult with a technician to completely understand what settings to change in the BIOS, and how to find them.

TV ON YOUR COMPUTER

You can make it so your can watch TV while cruising the Internet, or you can make your computer into a TV Channel Receptor and connect directly to your TV. You will need to upgrade your video card to include TV In and TV Out. Happauge is one of the easiest adapter cards that you can use on your computer to make it TV ready. Haupage should be fully compatilbe and tested for Windows XP. Another card that is widely used for TV production on your computer is the ATI All In Wonder.

If you want watch movies on your computer you can add a DVD ROM and by movies on DVD's.

With the advent of the Windows Media Center Edition you can record your favorite programs directy to your computers hard disk drive and play them back like a TIVO machine. And, you can do some limited video production, and use your computer like a stereo. You will need the right speakers for this though. See Sound Card and Speakers for more advice.

STUDIO VIDEO PRODUCTION

You can turn your computer into a professional digital video production studio just by adding a video production card and the software provided with the MATROX RT.X100 . The Matrox RT.X100 comes with software that is designed for Video Production by Adobe. The RT.X100 card might cost more than your computer.