Buying a Graphics Card - 2D

Graphics cards come in a couple of types, those that display the image on your screen and those that accelerate graphics improve the quality of graphics etc. The easy part is deciding what you want your card to do, if you are a work related computer user then a standard 2D card will do the job just nicely and even a video card built into a cheap motherboard will be sufficient. But for the most people who as well as work use there computer for some other reason such as games, DVD's video editing etc, will require that something extra from there Graphics cards. These are the graphics accelerators. Graphics accelerators today are mainly equipped with a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) this is a lot like a CPU (Central Processing Unit) but as you can guess it only deal with the graphics side of things, what this does mean though is that the graphics processing is taken of the CPU and moved to the GPU allowing the CPU to concentrate on different duties. It all boils down to higher frame rates and a lower CPU load. All good things I can assure you. 

2D Cards

Buying a 2D card these days would be easy enough if there were that many about to buy. Everyone seems to be concentrating on pushing the sales of the 3D Accelerators. While the price of the older 3D cards has significantly dropped in price as newer version are released, they are still not as cheap as buying a straight 2D card. 

If you are starting from scratch building a computer (which you probably will be otherwise your computer will have a 2D card already in it) you are in a good position for buying a 2D card because you can go for the onboard option. You can have your video built onto your motherboard so the overall cost of your system will be a lot cheaper. These cards are not the best but they do the job as well as any other 2D card. The main reason that people don't go for the 3D option for a few extra quid is that they cant afford to, that's why this option is one of the the best ways to go if you are looking at a cheap system.

If you already have a motherboard and don't want to get a new one then you will be looking at a standard 2D video card. You can get AGP (Advanced Graphics Port) or PCI (Peripheral Computer Interface) AGP cards are in a faster port but to be honest there will be little difference between the two in these types of cards. Makers of these 2D cards are S3, SiS, and Trident. There are others but most of them have moved on to greater things. They are just the ones I have still seen for sale. Buying online is the best way to get these cards because the large stores such as PC World do not sell them any more as there sales are not great.

Just consider the extra few pounds if you have them to get a cheap 3D card because you never know what you will want the computer for in the end. If you really cant afford it then this is your stop.

Important Point - While the onboard video (and sound in most cases) is a good idea of you need a cheap system put together very quickly it cause one major problem, that is with upgrading, you cannot just change your video card without changing the motherboard as well, if you are planning on upgrading at a later date then this route may prove to be more expensive in the long run even though it saves you money in the short term.    

Next - 3D Accelerators / Nvidia 

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