When I first decided to buy myself a laptop one of the first things I looked for is one with a dedicated graphics card, that would give me the possibility to play at least some recent games that I enjoy. After looking for a while I settled for a Dell Inspiron 1545 that featured the ATi Mobility Radeon 4330HD with 512MB dedicated video memory.

I’ll start off with something a little bit discouraging: this is only an entry-level video card, so it’s not possible to play all brand new games on very high resolution. Still, I believe I couldn’t have made a better choice at the time with the money that I had.

Technically, a cool thing about this card is that it can use normal DDR memory, such as DDR2 or DDR3, which are a bit cheaper than GDDR3, but of course deliver a lower performance. But it’s not such a big price to pay for the casual gamer that I am. The first thing that you should always be concerned about, when buying a laptop with a dedicated video card, is how it handles battery life. The Mobility 4330 has the PowerPlay feature, that delivers more power when needed and keeping energy consumption to a low when in idle or when graphics power is not a must. It also helps keeping temperatures to a low value: my laptop rarely even goes over 60 degrees Celsius while playing, the maximum in a demanding game being about 57. When not playing, I have a temperature average of 45 degrees, without any cooling pad. If you want HD movies, you can watch them with no problem on this video card. The Avivo HD video technology used allows the graphics processor to decode 720p HD videos with no problem. Of course, you may be curious about how games run.

I am quite a performance freak, and that means that if a game doesn’t run just perfect, I lower the resolution until it does. Still, I played popular games like Bioshock or Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 on medium or low settings, depending on the resolution. Windows 7 also gives me a 3D business and gaming performance of 5.9, which is way above average, in my opinion, for a low-end video card like this. If you wish to learn more about this video card you can visit their website.

Class mainstream graphic cards have always been the choice of those who didn’t have enough money for paying substantial amounts on recent appearances. As the new element costs in addition, many low-budget gamers have opted for models of mainstream category or even entry-level. AMD Radeon HD 6790 can now be found on U.S. market at a price of 149 dollars, a choice that has to be taken into account for those who want performance without a substantial financial effort.

HD 6790 video card is identical to the HD 6870 at first glance. Thus, we can observe an aesthetical aspect that is very simple, with straight lines and which can attract the attention only by the lack of logos of any kind.

AMD has taken this decision because of the high frequencies that the board has, the three phases and only one PCI-Express power that has HD 6850 and which may have been the limit. AMD Radeon HD 6790 has the same length and appearance as the traditional HD 6870. The back-panel contains two DVI connectors, a 1.4 HDMI connector and two Display Port 1.2 mini connectors, which can support up to three monitors each, using the daisy- chaining procedure. The cooling system is turbine type, evacuating the air directly outside the housing. The solid copper base takes the heat generated by the core and forwards it to the aluminum slides with the help of three heat pipes. An aluminum plate covers almost the entire surface of the video card and takes the heat generated by the memories and VRM for better reliability over time.

Although the core Barts LE used in this case is identical to the Barts Pro or XT, the stream units are not only in the BIOS disabled but are physically cut (laser cut). Radeon HD 6790 has a single Crossfire connector; therefore we cannot achieve such configurations with more than two boards. This reminds us that we are talking of a mainstream board, so no wonder there is also an aired PCB. The PCB’s design is identical to that of the HD 6870 and for the supply of the GPU being endowed with four phases based on the architecture of DriverMOS. They contain both switching transistors (upper and lower) and also the necessary part for commands. The controller is made by Chil Semiconductor, the precise model being CHL8214 and the GDDR5 memory used are produced by Hynix.<

The new video card is not practical than a reduction in the number of processing units, from 1120 as it has HD 6870 (or 960 for HD 6850), to 800. This video card has 800 stream processors, 16 ROP's and 40 texture units. The GPU reaches 840 MHz and the memory, 1 GB GDDR5 on 256-bit has 4200 MHz frequency and all culminating in a processing power of 1.34 TFLOPS. Although 6790 is a video card that has emerged to directly confront the 550, it manages to get a score very close to that obtained by the GTX 460, a superior GPU to GTX 550. As a conclusion, in terms of performance, AMD Radeon HD 6790 is one of the best choices at this time.

Sapphire HD5570 is equipped with 1GB of DDR3 memory, a 128-bit memory interface, 400 shader core and 16 ROPS. With these specifications, the HD5570 seems to be quite able to run current games at least at lower resolutions. Also, using the ATI flow, this board should be able to manage a smooth HD playback and photo editing and video features.

One of the most interesting features of the HD5570 is that even with all the power of technology built into the video board, the power consumption is low profile and it is only 45W. This would make from HD5570 a popular video board on the HTCP market, offering enough performance, thus being a great choice for budget players.

HD5570 comes with just a few accessories, CD with drivers, the books with instructions and two small console converters. Sapphire HD5570 comes with a low-profile design and uses a single slot active for cooling through a fan with automatic speed control. Using an active cooling on a GPU can reduce the temperatures a lot more than for a passive cooling and can increase the potential of overclocking. With a very low power requirement (10W idle) and 45 W in load, the video board does not need additional power other than that of PCI-E and Sapphire recommendation on the power supply is 400W. HD5570 is equipped with PCI-E 2.1 support and is fully compatible with PCI-E x16 slots. Another element which adds to the value of graphics cards in this segment is the use of ATI Hybrid CrossFireX. HD5570 is equipped with three display ports and is ideal for use in the HTPC configuration. DL-DVI-I port is designed to provide high quality digital video with all supported resolutions up to 2560 x 1600. Display Port supports Eyefinity and can run up to three monitors at resolutions of 5670 x 1200, when using a single monitor the maximum resolution is of 2560x1600. To ensure compatibility with all HTPC Sapphire has included two Small profile converters that will allow the video board to be used in low-profile case.

Technical specifications:
-Chipset: Radeon HD5570 PCIe series
-Pixel fillrate: 10.4GP / s
-Texture fillrate: 26GT / s
-Stream Processors: 400
-Bandwidth: 28.8GB / s
-Manufacturing Process: 40nm
-Memory Amount: 1GB
-Memory type: DDR3
-GPU frequency: 650Mhz
-Memory Frequency: 1800MHz
-Interface: 128bit
-Max Resolution: 2650 × 1600 (Dual Link)
-Interface Speed: 16x PCIe 2.1

Features: Display Port x 1, DVI x 1, VGA x 1, HDCP
For an entry-level video board, HD5570 is making an exceptional job. The Low-profile design of these video cards will be liked by many HTPC users, who are looking for small components which are consuming less and are able to play HD content. On the other hand the potential of overclocking is not disappointing. The overclock potential is due to the fact that the GPU is built on 40nm technology. All this makes this video board to increase in value, and if you do not have a solution to replace the integrated video card, the HD5570 is the best.

Likes:
-The performance
-Low profile
-low-price
-very high overclock potential
-low power consumption
-DX11

Dislikes:
-few accessories
-A little noisy

No matter whether you name them graphics cards, video adapters, display adapters, or graphics accelerator cards, they are all the same thing – video cards. Crucial devices, without whom a computer could never work. Onboard or independent, featuring 2D or 3D, their goal would be to process information and communicate with the monitor, telling him what to display in every single second.

No video card means no signal on your monitor. No signal on your monitor means nothing to do with your computer. It is simple and plain. Therefore, whether you are the type of person who tears his PC apart to make it work or not, you should have some basic notions regarding how these devices function.

Types of video cards
One general and common classification of video cards would be according with the position of the graphics inside the computer. There are the so called on – board models, or integrated ones, that are placed on the motherboard, and there are the dedicated graphics, more reliable and with an increased performance. Integrated chipsets usually work with some of the system’s RAM, reducing the overall performance and they definitely cannot support 3D applications. In comparison, the dedicated chipsets have their own processor and RAM, increasing the system’s capacities and even taking some of the processor’s tasks. They are ideal for running powerful games or handling programs that require visual effects. Another classification would be made depending on the slot type, which can be PCI Express, AGP or PCI. The express model is the fastest one, followed by AGP and obviously the less preferred being the standard PCI. However, even the latest computers are taken on the market with integrated graphics, allowing the customer to choose whether he needs a dedicated model or not and what model should it be.

Video cards- functionality
Basically, a video card is responsible with transmitting specific information to the display about the content of every single pixel that should be displayed – and there are millions of pixels that need to be coordinated in every moment of time. Nevertheless, it could not know such things if it were not for the processor to send these data to the video card. And it is one thing to make images from binary data and a totally different challenge to create 3D images. The graphics will first establish a wire frame made from straight lines. Then it fills the pixels that remained and it adds color, texture and light. Depending on the usage, a processor might have to repeat these steps for approximately 60 times in a second. Graphics need four components for a proper functionality – a connection for data transfer and power supply with the motherboard, a processor to take all the decisions, a memory to remember the information provided and a connection with the monitor to transmit the instructions.

Cooling devices
Every video card needs a cooling device at some point, because the numerous operations that it makes, with an incredible speed, solicit the graphics so the device itself might get warm. They work with electricity and electricity is known for its ability of converting into heat. Moreover, the heat that is not dissipated, leads to overheating and severe damages. There are heat sinks, computer fans and water block devices. The first two use air to cool your video card, while the last one works with water.

We appreciate our personal computer because of its capacity of providing audio and video information. Our multimedia machines have evolved since ten years ago, do you remember how the games looked like? They were 2D and unnatural colors were displayed on our screens.

To display a game’s graphic the computer needs a video card. This is the one that encodes the information from your computer and turn it into analog pixels. Many of us ask their selves how this component works. Well, here is some information about the way it works out. From the very begging you should know that the video card is a component of the CPU.

This component is double linked, on one hand to the motherboard and on the other hand to the monitor. The PC sends series of information to the video card and the Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) receives it. GPU has the duty to transform the binary encoded information into analog one; otherwise the monitor cannot display it. What you should know about the GPU, is the fact that it has a certain speed and strength. The video card works according to it. In case you are playing a game that has a simple graphic and not to much movements the GPU will be less stressed and you do not need one of great speed, but if you are playing 3D game or you are working with huge graphic software you need a stronger GPU and a faster one.

Nowadays there are many increasing speed options and one of them is the downloading a software to overclock your GPU. This operation is risky; as a consequence the companies that design video cards ATI and NVIDIA have hidden the overclock files. In case you still want to increase your GPU 3D performance download online the software called RivaTuner. Moreover, you should know that the video card is a power consumer. So, if you are working on your computer at office, you do not solicit so much your video card and as a result you do not consume so much power, almost 40 watts, but if you are using you computer for gaming or multimedia issues then, you should know that the consume grows to at least 200 watts. Finally, the main interdependent relation is established between your video card and monitor. Your video card could have even two ports so that you can connect two monitors to it and use them in the same time. Here are two cases to figure out how the information provided by the video card gets to the monitor.

The encoded information gets to the monitor through a cord and the monitor has to decode it. The result of decoding is o succession of lines and grids. This lines and grids compose the image. But just grids and lines cannot realize an image. Here appear the pixels. The monitor’s duty is to colorize or shade the pixels according to the video card’s sent information.