Video Cards and Related Technologies

How does a video card work?

A video card basically converts the computer’s digital signals coming from the processor into a signal that the monitor is able to interpret. Hence, its basic function is to convert data. The main point of difference between an entry level video card and a state-of-the art one is that the latter’s conversion speed is much better.

The Chips

The chip is the heart of the video card. It is where all the processing is done. It also makes 3D acceleration possible. The chip is to the video card, what the processor is to the computer. Of the two major chip manufacturers, ATI and NVIDIA, the former is well known for high quality and great technology.

Pipes

The information must travel through tunnels called ‘pipes’, before it can be converted. On one end it starts as raw data and ends up at the opposite end in a format that is compatible with the monitor. On its way, the data undergoes the conversion process. The greater the number of pipes, the more data that can be converted simultaneously.

The amount of data that a pipe can hold is called its Memory Interface. A pipe with a 128 bit interface can process more data than one with a 64 bit interface.

Memory

The memory is used to store temporary or transient information. Video information, being very data heavy, needs more memory. The two main types of memory are SDRAM and DDR RAM. DDR is superior as it can transmit information faster.

ATI Technology

An ATI card will offer many technologies that will significantly enhance your video experience. ATI’s cards are fully compatible with all the latest 3D technologies and do not rely on your computer’s CPU to process information, as do some of the entry-level cards.

SmartShader™

This technology will unleash a new generation of visual effects on your computer. Realistic graphics with breathtaking 3D effects are possible with SmartShader™. DVD movies can be viewed to better effect with it too.

SmartVision®

SmartVision® has the effect of removing jagged edges, improving the image, bringing its finer details to light.

Fullstream™

This is the latest technology [http://electronics-warehouse.info] in video processing, which is particularly for the Internet and video playback processing. It greatly improves the quality and performance of streaming video.

Logan writes about various topics. This article is free to re-print as long as nothing is changed, the bio remains, all hyper links remain intacked and the rel="nofollow" tag isnt added to any links. Thank-You

Adoption of New Video Storage Technology Quickens Over Time

There have been a lot of different mediums for storing video over the years and they just keep getting better and better. For example, the first movies were silent movies because the technology of the time wasn't capable of encoding sound on celluloid (or reading it off of celluloid either for that matter). In these movies, text was shown on the screen in between shots of the actors to tell the audience what the actors were saying and music was often played along with the movie either by a live piano player or on a record player of some sort. Of course it didn't take long for movie makers to figure out how to encode sound on celluloid and a new era in film making was born. It would still be some decades though before color was added to the capabilities of video recording, but when it did, it made a huge difference to the quality of the entertainment.

Of course technology eventually emerged that allowed people to make their own home movies on 35 millimeter film, but it wasn't until the invention of the video cassette that consumers really got control over how they recorded and watched video. The video cassette was (and is) basically a reel to reel magnetic tape that's enclosed in a casing to protect it from damage. The video cassette player turned the wheels and dragged the tape over heads that read the information encoded on the tape and then converted that information into video and audio. Video cassette tapes came in both VHS and Betamax formats, but the principle of how they worked was basically the same. Video cassette technology allowed people to record their own video either off of TV signals or using video cameras. This technology also gave rise to stores that rented and sold movies that were prerecorded on video cassettes.

With exception of a little noticed and failed video disc format that used laser technology and that was marketed in the late nineteen seventies, the VHS video cassette format was the dominant technology until nineteen ninety eight when the DVD- or digital video disc- was introduced. The DVD was the successful descendant of the older laser disc format. DVD's were much smaller than the older laser discs, being the same size as CD's, and encoded information much more efficiently. DVD's gradually replaced VHS as the preferred video storage format of consumers.

Now, high definition DVD's are the latest consumer video storage technology. Unfortunately though High Def DVD's have yet to be accepted by the mainstream because of an ugly war between the two formats that arrived on the scene virtually simultaneously. Both formats are capable of storing huge amounts of data- enough to render an entire full length movie in movie theater quality from a single disc the same size as the older DVD format.

There has been speculation that another video storage format could make high def DVD's obsolete before they really have a chance to take hold. For example, some insiders predict that in the near future people will purchase terabyte sized hard disks that contain a huge number of movie titles. As the owners of these hard disks want to watch the movies stored on them, they can pay a fee to the distributor in order to unlock and view each movie. This would certainly eliminate a lot of the difficulties associated with distributing individual videos, and as surprising as it may seem, current technology is close to being ready for such a development. The Internet is another alternative source of video to look out for.

We may be looking at an interesting phenomenon where an entire video storage format becomes obsolete before it gets adopted by the mainstream.

E.Sanderson writes articles about the latest developments in technology, electronics, and satellite TV. She'd like to inform you about the latest Dish TV services and how you can find the best Dishnet Network Offers.

The New PlayStation 3 is an Example of Cutting Edge Video Game Technology

One thing that many people use their televisions for that goes largely unnoticed in the greater scheme of things is video gaming. There are actually a variety of gaming platforms on the market that are designed to take full advantage of state of the art television technology like High Definition Television. The video game platform that's dominated the market all the way back to 1994 is Sony's PlayStation. With over thirteen thousand individual PlayStation video game titles available world wide, this platform easily backs up that domination.

Sony has recently released the latest version of it's PlatStation 3, often referred to simply as PS3. Not to outdone by Microsoft with it's new Xbox 360 which sports three separate processors each running at 3.2 Gigahertz, the Sony joined forces with IBM and Toshiba to develop what they call the Cell processor. The Cell processor has one 3.2 GigaHertz PowerPC processor with a 512 KB L2 cache which, while impressive in it's own right, only manages the eight other "Synergistic Processing Elements" (or SPEs) that do the real work. Each SPE is also equipped with 256 Kilobytes of SRAM for some serious number crunching.

One thing that's even more impressive about this system is that it's deliberately designed for redundancy. Even though there are eight SPEs, only seven of them are intended to work at any given time. The eighth one is in reserve in case one of the others fails.

So far we've accounted for nine processors (eight SPEs plus the one PowerPC processor), but Sony wasn't content with that. The new PS3 has a separate Graphic Processing Unit, or GPU, that is calls the RSX "Reality Synthesizer" which runs at 550-MHz and has 300 million transistors built in! The "Reality Synthesizer" has the ability to create graphics that are nearly indistinguishable from photographs of real objects, which promises an incredible step forward in gaming reality.

One feature of the new PS3 that's been much anticipated is it's ability to support 1080p resolution. Unfortunately that capability hasn't actually made it onto this model. It does still support standard definition 480i and high definition 720p resolution though.

The new PS3 also has lots of features that make it fully functional home entertainment device. For one thing it has a Blu-ray disc drive which enables it to play High Definition video when connected to a High Definition Television set. The Blu-ray drive is also backward compatible so the new PS3 can play all varieties of CD's and DVD's (ROM, R+W, +R, etc.) It's also able to play PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games.

The new PlayStation 3 will be available in a 20 Gigabyte hard drive model and a 60 Gigabyte hard drive model. The 20 Gigabyte model actually loses some functionality compared to last year's 20 Gigabyte model, including Wi-Fi compatibility, HDMI output, Flash Inputs, and a memory stick. The 60 Gigabyte model has lots of built in features though including 4 USB ports, a one Gigabit Ethernet port, and optical audio output among others. It also supports Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound (which it better if it's High Definition compatible).

With all of these great features and over 13,000 video games to play on it, the new PS3 is truly a competitive video game system.

J. Hall writes articles for consumers who want to find the best new technology currently available. She has written for many major publications about the latest television deals and promotions and how buyers can find the best discounts.

Xbox 360 Represents a Giant Step in Video Game Technology

One aspect of television technology that's frequently overlooked is gaming. Some may look down on video games as being activities for adolescents, but a lot of former adolescents who were completely into video games have grown up and brought those games with them.

A quick look at some video game systems shows that the games have grown up too. Microsoft's Xbox is a perfect example of this phenomenon. If the last video game system you played was an Atari or and Intellivision, you won't even recognize the new Xbox 360. This system is meant to deliver the best possible video game experience given today's technology and it uses that technology in full. It's central processing unit is made up of three separate processors each with a clock speed of 3.2 Gigahertz. It also has an ATI graphics processor that runs at 500 Megahertz that can process four times as many pixels a second than the original Xbox. (There isn't even a comparison between this and the Intellivision!) The Xbox 360 has 512 Megabytes of RAM which is shared among all of the processors.

The Xbox 360 is also designed to work with High Definition. As part of the standard for the Xbox 360 all video games have to support either 720p or 1080i resolutions and the wide screen 16:9 aspect ratio. Supposedly a High Definition Television set isn't completely necessary to play the Xbox 360. If that's true, one has to wonder what happens to the extra screen width when the Xbox is used with a 4:3 aspect ratio television. It's easy to imagine losing the right and left edges of the screen getting in the way of playing some games. Like with First person shooters, you might find yourself shot by someone just out of your view but who you would have seen with a 16:9 screen.

The Xbox 360 also come with a 20 gigabyte hard drive. The hard drive is removable and can hold music to be played as a soundtrack to be played along with games. (In the old days we were forced to turn on the CD player if we wanted a sound track.) Presumably the hard drive could also hold digital photos and other data. In fact, though the literature is quick to emphasize that the Xbox 360 is primarily meant to be used as a gaming platform, it can be used for a lot of other types of media too. For example it will function as an MP3, CD, and DVD player and display digital photographs off of DVD's and CD's. The fact that the unit includes three USB ports means that a huge number of devices including digital cameras, MP3 players, and computers with Microsoft Windows XP can be used with the Xbox 360. Other extras include wireless controllers with rechargeable batteries that can charge on the unit itself, and the ability to establish a wireless connection with your computer.

With all of this connectivity it seems that they only thing, the Xbox 360 won't do is replace the work station abilities of a normal computer.

J. Hall writes articles for consumers who want to find the best new technology currently available. She has written for many major publications about the latest television deals and promotions and how buyers can find the best discounts.

Xbox 360 Represents a Giant Step in Video Game Technology

One aspect of television technology that's frequently overlooked is gaming. Some may look down on video games as being activities for adolescents, but a lot of former adolescents who were completely into video games have grown up and brought those games with them.

A quick look at some video game systems shows that the games have grown up too. Microsoft's Xbox is a perfect example of this phenomenon. If the last video game system you played was an Atari or and Intellivision, you won't even recognize the new Xbox 360. This system is meant to deliver the best possible video game experience given today's technology and it uses that technology in full. It's central processing unit is made up of three separate processors each with a clock speed of 3.2 Gigahertz. It also has an ATI graphics processor that runs at 500 Megahertz that can process four times as many pixels a second than the original Xbox. (There isn't even a comparison between this and the Intellivision!) The Xbox 360 has 512 Megabytes of RAM which is shared among all of the processors.

The Xbox 360 is also designed to work with High Definition. As part of the standard for the Xbox 360 all video games have to support either 720p or 1080i resolutions and the wide screen 16:9 aspect ratio. Supposedly a High Definition Television set isn't completely necessary to play the Xbox 360. If that's true, one has to wonder what happens to the extra screen width when the Xbox is used with a 4:3 aspect ratio television. It's easy to imagine losing the right and left edges of the screen getting in the way of playing some games. Like with First person shooters, you might find yourself shot by someone just out of your view but who you would have seen with a 16:9 screen.

The Xbox 360 also come with a 20 gigabyte hard drive. The hard drive is removable and can hold music to be played as a soundtrack to be played along with games. (In the old days we were forced to turn on the CD player if we wanted a sound track.) Presumably the hard drive could also hold digital photos and other data. In fact, though the literature is quick to emphasize that the Xbox 360 is primarily meant to be used as a gaming platform, it can be used for a lot of other types of media too. For example it will function as an MP3, CD, and DVD player and display digital photographs off of DVD's and CD's. The fact that the unit includes three USB ports means that a huge number of devices including digital cameras, MP3 players, and computers with Microsoft Windows XP can be used with the Xbox 360. Other extras include wireless controllers with rechargeable batteries that can charge on the unit itself, and the ability to establish a wireless connection with your computer.

With all of this connectivity it seems that they only thing, the Xbox 360 won't do is replace the work station abilities of a normal computer.

J. Hall writes articles for consumers who want to find the best new technology currently available. She has written for many major publications about the latest television deals and promotions and how buyers can find the best discounts.

The New PlayStation 3 is an Example of Cutting Edge Video Game Technology

One thing that many people use their televisions for that goes largely unnoticed in the greater scheme of things is video gaming. There are actually a variety of gaming platforms on the market that are designed to take full advantage of state of the art television technology like High Definition Television. The video game platform that's dominated the market all the way back to 1994 is Sony's PlayStation. With over thirteen thousand individual PlayStation video game titles available world wide, this platform easily backs up that domination.

Sony has recently released the latest version of it's PlatStation 3, often referred to simply as PS3. Not to outdone by Microsoft with it's new Xbox 360 which sports three separate processors each running at 3.2 Gigahertz, the Sony joined forces with IBM and Toshiba to develop what they call the Cell processor. The Cell processor has one 3.2 GigaHertz PowerPC processor with a 512 KB L2 cache which, while impressive in it's own right, only manages the eight other "Synergistic Processing Elements" (or SPEs) that do the real work. Each SPE is also equipped with 256 Kilobytes of SRAM for some serious number crunching.

One thing that's even more impressive about this system is that it's deliberately designed for redundancy. Even though there are eight SPEs, only seven of them are intended to work at any given time. The eighth one is in reserve in case one of the others fails.

So far we've accounted for nine processors (eight SPEs plus the one PowerPC processor), but Sony wasn't content with that. The new PS3 has a separate Graphic Processing Unit, or GPU, that is calls the RSX "Reality Synthesizer" which runs at 550-MHz and has 300 million transistors built in! The "Reality Synthesizer" has the ability to create graphics that are nearly indistinguishable from photographs of real objects, which promises an incredible step forward in gaming reality.

One feature of the new PS3 that's been much anticipated is it's ability to support 1080p resolution. Unfortunately that capability hasn't actually made it onto this model. It does still support standard definition 480i and high definition 720p resolution though.

The new PS3 also has lots of features that make it fully functional home entertainment device. For one thing it has a Blu-ray disc drive which enables it to play High Definition video when connected to a High Definition Television set. The Blu-ray drive is also backward compatible so the new PS3 can play all varieties of CD's and DVD's (ROM, R+W, +R, etc.) It's also able to play PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games.

The new PlayStation 3 will be available in a 20 Gigabyte hard drive model and a 60 Gigabyte hard drive model. The 20 Gigabyte model actually loses some functionality compared to last year's 20 Gigabyte model, including Wi-Fi compatibility, HDMI output, Flash Inputs, and a memory stick. The 60 Gigabyte model has lots of built in features though including 4 USB ports, a one Gigabit Ethernet port, and optical audio output among others. It also supports Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound (which it better if it's High Definition compatible).

With all of these great features and over 13,000 video games to play on it, the new PS3 is truly a competitive video game system.

J. Hall writes articles for consumers who want to find the best new technology currently available. She has written for many major publications about the latest television deals and promotions and how buyers can find the best discounts.

Adoption of New Video Storage Technology Quickens Over Time

There have been a lot of different mediums for storing video over the years and they just keep getting better and better. For example, the first movies were silent movies because the technology of the time wasn't capable of encoding sound on celluloid (or reading it off of celluloid either for that matter). In these movies, text was shown on the screen in between shots of the actors to tell the audience what the actors were saying and music was often played along with the movie either by a live piano player or on a record player of some sort. Of course it didn't take long for movie makers to figure out how to encode sound on celluloid and a new era in film making was born. It would still be some decades though before color was added to the capabilities of video recording, but when it did, it made a huge difference to the quality of the entertainment.

Of course technology eventually emerged that allowed people to make their own home movies on 35 millimeter film, but it wasn't until the invention of the video cassette that consumers really got control over how they recorded and watched video. The video cassette was (and is) basically a reel to reel magnetic tape that's enclosed in a casing to protect it from damage. The video cassette player turned the wheels and dragged the tape over heads that read the information encoded on the tape and then converted that information into video and audio. Video cassette tapes came in both VHS and Betamax formats, but the principle of how they worked was basically the same. Video cassette technology allowed people to record their own video either off of TV signals or using video cameras. This technology also gave rise to stores that rented and sold movies that were prerecorded on video cassettes.

With exception of a little noticed and failed video disc format that used laser technology and that was marketed in the late nineteen seventies, the VHS video cassette format was the dominant technology until nineteen ninety eight when the DVD- or digital video disc- was introduced. The DVD was the successful descendant of the older laser disc format. DVD's were much smaller than the older laser discs, being the same size as CD's, and encoded information much more efficiently. DVD's gradually replaced VHS as the preferred video storage format of consumers.

Now, high definition DVD's are the latest consumer video storage technology. Unfortunately though High Def DVD's have yet to be accepted by the mainstream because of an ugly war between the two formats that arrived on the scene virtually simultaneously. Both formats are capable of storing huge amounts of data- enough to render an entire full length movie in movie theater quality from a single disc the same size as the older DVD format.

There has been speculation that another video storage format could make high def DVD's obsolete before they really have a chance to take hold. For example, some insiders predict that in the near future people will purchase terabyte sized hard disks that contain a huge number of movie titles. As the owners of these hard disks want to watch the movies stored on them, they can pay a fee to the distributor in order to unlock and view each movie. This would certainly eliminate a lot of the difficulties associated with distributing individual videos, and as surprising as it may seem, current technology is close to being ready for such a development. The Internet is another alternative source of video to look out for.

We may be looking at an interesting phenomenon where an entire video storage format becomes obsolete before it gets adopted by the mainstream.

E.Sanderson writes articles about the latest developments in technology, electronics, and satellite TV. She'd like to inform you about the latest Dish TV services and how you can find the best Dishnet Network Offers.

Video Cards and Related Technologies

How does a video card work?

A video card basically converts the computer’s digital signals coming from the processor into a signal that the monitor is able to interpret. Hence, its basic function is to convert data. The main point of difference between an entry level video card and a state-of-the art one is that the latter’s conversion speed is much better.

The Chips

The chip is the heart of the video card. It is where all the processing is done. It also makes 3D acceleration possible. The chip is to the video card, what the processor is to the computer. Of the two major chip manufacturers, ATI and NVIDIA, the former is well known for high quality and great technology.

Pipes

The information must travel through tunnels called ‘pipes’, before it can be converted. On one end it starts as raw data and ends up at the opposite end in a format that is compatible with the monitor. On its way, the data undergoes the conversion process. The greater the number of pipes, the more data that can be converted simultaneously.

The amount of data that a pipe can hold is called its Memory Interface. A pipe with a 128 bit interface can process more data than one with a 64 bit interface.

Memory

The memory is used to store temporary or transient information. Video information, being very data heavy, needs more memory. The two main types of memory are SDRAM and DDR RAM. DDR is superior as it can transmit information faster.

ATI Technology

An ATI card will offer many technologies that will significantly enhance your video experience. ATI’s cards are fully compatible with all the latest 3D technologies and do not rely on your computer’s CPU to process information, as do some of the entry-level cards.

SmartShader™

This technology will unleash a new generation of visual effects on your computer. Realistic graphics with breathtaking 3D effects are possible with SmartShader™. DVD movies can be viewed to better effect with it too.

SmartVision®

SmartVision® has the effect of removing jagged edges, improving the image, bringing its finer details to light.

Fullstream™

This is the latest technology [http://electronics-warehouse.info] in video processing, which is particularly for the Internet and video playback processing. It greatly improves the quality and performance of streaming video.

Logan writes about various topics. This article is free to re-print as long as nothing is changed, the bio remains, all hyper links remain intacked and the rel="nofollow" tag isnt added to any links. Thank-You