4. Build Your Own Computer: Video Cards and RAM
Video Cards
This is the fourth
installment of building your own computer. You've made it this
far, hang in there! Now comes either an easy or very difficult
step depending on what you want your computer to do. If you don't
play any games and don't plan on upgrading your computer any time soon,
then choose integrated graphics. Pretty much all integrated
graphics on the market these days are sufficient for word processing and
internet browsing. However, if you are planning on using any type of
linux, or the next version of Windows (Vista) you need to buy a video
card either now or in the future.
The video card computes all the information that is
displayed on your screen. This lets the CPU work on other things.
This in turn allows the CPU to do more, and improves graphics on screen
because video cards are specifically made to display graphics. CPUs' at
least nowadays, are not meant to do this.
Unless you are keeping your old AGP video card with a Socket 478 or A system you should buy a PCI Express graphics card. Socket AM2, 939, 754, and 775 are meant to use PCI Express. However, if you
have recently bought an AGP card, many boards with these sockets can
still be bought with AGP slots. Some even come with both the PCI
Express and AGP slot. PCI Express offers twice the bandwidth and
is the newest standard, and offers the ability to use two or four cards (in some setups) to increase performance.
A good card for the majority of users should cost about
$100 USD. If you are into heavy gaming it can go up to $300 USD.
Also remember that for video cards ONLY choose cards that are made by or
based on NVIDIA or ATI GPUs (Graphics processing units.) For the
average user 128MB of memory is good. For the power gamer 256MB is the
preference as recent games have started to require this, but 512MB
boards are good for future-proofing. This is
the local memory on the board, not the "hypermemory" or such that uses
system memory (much slower) when the local memory fills up. If the
card says it can "dynamically allocate up to xMB then it's most likely
either integrated, or uses non-local memory. As said before, try
to stay away from these cards, unless your budget is very tight.
The next generation Windows OS (Windows Vista) and many versions of
Linux, work best with discrete cards, and in some instances will not
work with integrated graphics chips. (Such as the Intel 810)
One thing to consider is
whether or not the card requires an extra power Molex connector (four
pins in a rectangular package) If you are building a computer from
scratch this shouldn't be a worry, but if you are adding a card to a
purchased system you may have to upgrade the power supply to at least
350watts. (next section)
Remember to compare and contrast cards by looking at reviews at places
such as www.anandtech.com and
www.tomshardware.com.
Memory or RAM (Random Access Memory)
Memory is where programs are stored while the computer
is working. When the computer turns off this memory is lost.
When it turns on again the computer loads the program(s) into memory
from the hard drive. Memory is much faster than a hard drive, and
thus this drastically improves performance.
Two types of
memory are currently used by the average consumer: DDR or DDR1 and
DDR2. Currently there is virtually no difference between the two
in performance, except for price. DDR2 is currently slightly more
expensive than DDR, however it gives slightly higher performance.
Remember to match your RAM with the specification the motherboard
manufacturer says it supports. Overall it's a fairly simple
process, one that a good majority of "dude its a ...." computer owners
have accomplished.
Memory modules are generally backward
compatible. For example a DDR400 module will work work in a
motherboard that supports DDR333 or DDR266. However, DDR2 modules are
NOT backward compatible in DDR1 (DDR) boards.
Most motherboards support dual channel memory (DDR and DDR2) where if you buy the memory in pairs labeled "dual channel" you should be able to get better performance.
You should shoot for at least 512MB,
though nothing over 2GB will improve performance much. Kingston,
Corsair, OCZ, Patriot, are all good manufacturers of memory (though
there are others). Remember to compare and
contrast online.
Kevin C. August 28th 2005
kcas88@gmail.com
- Updated Dec. 2nd 2005
- Updated Apr. 9th 2006
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『It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.』 - Albert E.
