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GRAPHIC CARD IS A BOTTLENECK

QUESTION: The main reason I recently bought my new computer with a bigger hard drive and lots more memory was to get more speed. Although work was my justification for spending the money, I'm an avid gamer and love playing computer games. I thought games I couldn't play or performed poorly on my old system would really fly on the new one. I got some better performance but quite frankly, I'm disappointed as I thought things would look a lot better than they do. Any suggestions?

ANSWER: One would think that business applications would be the most demanding on a computer but that's really not the case. Entertainment software is what really pushes the envelope. Today's games with their high resolution graphics, millions of colors and complex algorithms to simulate textures and special effects put an enormous demand on a computer's processor and other resources. Chances are when you bought your new computer that boasted the fast processor, big hard drive and more that the manufacturer skimped on the graphics card simply because its not something that has made itself known to the consumer as much as the other aforementioned items. But its notoriety is increasing as the component most responsible for bottlenecking your computer's speed.

The graphics display card is the device into which you plug the color monitor. It is this card that controls how many colors you can see on the screen at one time and the total number of pixels that can be displayed. To keep costs down, most off the shelf computer systems come with generic graphics cards that do little more than display the basic screen resolutions and minimal colors. But even cards that offer more colors and resolution are still guilty of slowing things down. That's because most or all of the massive amounts of calculations required to display multiple moving images must still be done by the computer's processor. The harder the computer has to work with graphics, the less time it has to maintain other critical functions. The bottom line is that you see smaller performance improvements

Having the proper video card means you have a card that not only displays millions of colors in high resolutions, but also performs most or all of the graphical calculations thereby freeing the computer to do other important tasks. One of the fastest graphic cards on the market at the time of this column comes from Creative Labs. Using the nvidia chip set, the Annihilator series comes in four models. The top of the line, the 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 Ultra is as impressive as its title. It acts as an accelerator producing up to one billion pixels per second. This high speed literally lets you view full screen high resolution and color images at nearly 60 frames per second (fps). Smooth full motion television images move at 30 fps so this card gives you smooth animation with room to spare. And at $499 for this card, you're entitled to expect some of the best performing graphics in the PC arena. If that's a little too rich for your blood, check out Creative's other Annihilator models starting at $129.

By the way, you mentioned your purchase justification was business so you'll be happy to know that you can maintain your line of reasoning when buying one of these cards. Your business applications will benefit, especially if you do any presentation slide shows, use PhotoShop or just about anything that is graphically intensive. Even your spreadsheets will display more rows and columns at one time without having to scroll. Make your screen a thing of beauty and your new computer scream as it was intended by getting a high performance graphics card and remove that last bottleneck.

Creative Labs
www.creative.com
www.3dblaster.com