What to look for in a video card

[GundamSonicZeroX]

I haven't really kept up with video cards in the past two or three years. I am currently looking at some video cards for my new system. I went to Guru3d and looked at the specs of some cards. I looked at the screen saying: "What the hell is a shader processor? Why aren't the pipelines listed?" I've done some looking around and am still at a loss.

I remember that the main things to look for in video cards GeForce 7 and back were Core Clock, Mem Clock, Pixel Pipelines, and Vertex Pipleines. Have things changed that much since when I was into video cards?

 

[Lithan]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...idia_geforce_8800_gt/2

There's a brief summary of the current nvidia architecture (I really have no clue about ati's right now).

Due to family and manu differences in efficiency, the old ways of counting parts don't work very well anymore... especially since some cards (640gts) have more of one part than they know what to do with and are beat by a card slower on paper because it's stronger in a presently more vital area.

Know what games you care about, look at benchies, then buy.

 

[error8]

Yup, bencheis are the most important thing when buying a videocard. All those other things are just a pile of elements that will get you more confused.

 

[taltamir]

Stream processor = a DX10 component that combines shaders with a few other functions (it can do any of those functions)
Anyways, those things you asked about are engineering decisions. Unless you are a video card engineer you should be worried about benchmarks...

That being said, nVidia higher end cards come with more stream processors. More then it reasonably needs for any game today. That results in cards that have significantly higher stream processor power with very little measure game improvement. The reason that is improtant is because nvidia's stream processors can run C code, and nvidia purchased AEGIA and is porting physx to their drivers. There is already a CLOSED beta, but rumers say it is amazing. The thing is, when it arrives every nvidia card with DX10 capability will be able to running physx on its stream processors, so their value will go up in the future. The question is, would the lower end cards with "enough" get a significant hit from it, and would the higher end card with "wasted extra" benefit greatly from it, or would it make little to no difference...
But this is something hard to predict, so I would be weary of spending extra money today betting on it.