Just as racing car drivers rely on their motors, so too do professional computer gamers rely on their graphics cards. It’s the strength of this computer component that often is deciding factor between victory and defeat – and, in the world of professional computer gaming, the difference between small and large sums of money.
The potency of graphics cards is measured in terms of the time required to convert into images the bundles of indecipherable data that are sent from the PC’s main “central processing unit” chip (CPU).“Professional gamers require every last bit of picture-per-second power,” says Thilo Bayer, editor of a popular gaming magazine based in Europe.The raw speed of a graphics card is augmented by another factor: the precision with which the card reproduces patterns and smooth edges. “The subjective feeling of the game is increased in these areas,” Bayer says.The Ferraris and Mercedes of the graphics card world are named ATI and Nvidia. Both of these are companies which develop and produce the fancy graphics processors that are used to recreate the amazing 3-D graphics on computer games such as the current fan-favorite Harry Potter.The cutting edge Radeon 8500 chip from Canada’s ATI aren’t found only on their brand of cards, but as of recently also on boards from the Taiwanese manufacturer Gigabyte and the French firm Guillemot/Hercules.The California-based semiconductor manufacturer Nvidia takes a different approach. The company sells no graphics cards of its own but sources its chips out to other companies that make graphics cards. Consumers who want to use a card with one of Nvidia’s latest chips must hunt for a card with the newly introduced GeForce4 chip NV17 and NV25.The latest offering from Elsa includes a number of exciting features for high-end graphics fans. These include two digital monitor connections (DVI ports), high resolution television encoder, and built-in DVD or Personal Cinema playback.Additionally, the chips support storage speeds of up to 550 megahertz (MHz), which means that the chips can perform at speeds of up to two to three times as fast as its predecessor, the GeForce3 chip, depending upon the task.Nvidia says that its latest graphics processors are the fastest in the world, faster even than those in Microsoft’s new game console Xbox. The Nvidia chip can calculate up to 86 million polygons per second, roughly a third faster than the Xbox, which contains an Nvidia chip that can handle roughly 60 million polygons per second – enough to recreate photo-realistic animation.But consumers who wish to jump on the latest graphics chip technology and purchase a card equipped with the GeForce4 chip will have to dig deep into their pockets. Some analysts recommend the much more affordable models from the previous generations for consumers interested in beefing up their computers today. The best price-power ratio lies in cards featuring the GeForce2 titanium chip or cards with ATI’s 7500 Radeon chipset. These cards are not just well equipped for hobbyists, but also for implementation in business situations. Even the simpler models allow for connection with two monitors. That’s optimal for office users needing to do construction (CAD) or photo manipulation tasks. The more affordable cards are also plenty capable of editing video. All you really need in addition to the digital video camera is a FireWire card and the editing software.
