Best Video Card Manufacturers

As you plan to upgrade or buy a new PC video card, it is important to have some information on the top video or graphics card manufacturers on the market.

What is a video or graphics card?

The major role of a graphics card is to display graphic images on a computer screen. The computer screen you are looking at, right now, has millions of tiny dots called pixels. These dots are so small that they are almost invisible to the human eye. To display an image, the video card controls which dots to light up. To display a 3D graphic image, the computer needs the graphics card to perform some calculations — about sixty times each second. Not all graphic cards are that fast. This is why some 3D games will run slow on one computer and smoothly on another machine. Powerful graphics cards don’t choke, or slow down, when playing high-quality, intense games.

AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)

ATI was acquired by AMD in 2006. Founded in 1969 with its headquarters in Sunnyvale California, it is the largest supplier of graphic processing units in the world. AMD specializes on graphic processors, motherboard chipsets, and microprocessors.

Following the acquisition of ATI, some products were re-branded and now go by the label AMD. Not every product was slapped with the AMD label though. For example, the ATI Radeon kept the ATI brand name. Nonetheless, the company plans to rebrand all products to AMD at some point. To go along with the video cards, AMD is a leader in flash technology and recently started its own mobile platform.

ATI produces computer graphic chipsets, handheld chipsets, and console graphics products for Nintendo gaming consoles and Microsoft Xbox 360 as well.

NVIDIA

NVIDIA is the world's largest graphic processing units and chipsets manufacturer. Nvidia is a U.S. company based in Santa Clara, California. The company was founded in 1993 and together with AMD Graphics Group (ATI Technologies), the two companies dominate the computer graphics industry. Nvidia specializes in making graphics processing units and chipsets for personal computers, mobile devices, and workstations.

According to the survey conducted by Valve, Nvidia and ATI technologies command 93% of the world's PC video-card gaming market.

Nvidia developed the graphics hardware for the Xbox game console and also the Sony Playstations. Nvidia was also the first company to develop a quad-core processor for mobile devices.

Please note that the high-end video cards consume more electricity than any other computer parts do. So, if you are looking to add a high-end video card, make sure you have a power supply that can handle it.

If you enjoyed this post, please Tweet or

-By Dominic

Web site and all contents © Copyright ComputerTooSlow.com 2012, All rights reserved.