2007-07-14 01:00:48 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Laptops & Notebooks
A video card, (also referred to as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, graphics card, and numerous other terms), is an item of personal computer hardware whose function is to generate and output images to a display.
The term is usually used to refer to a separate, dedicated expansion card that is plugged into a slot on the computer's motherboard, as opposed to a graphics controller integrated into the motherboard chipset.
Some video cards offer added functionalities, such as video capture, TV tuner adapter, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding or even FireWire, mouse, light pen or joystick connectors.
Video cards are not used exclusively in IBM type PCs; they have been used in devices such as Commodore Amiga (connected by the slots Zorro II and Zorro III), Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Atari Mega ST/TT (attached to the MegaBus or VME interface), Spectravideo SVI-328, MSX and, obviously, in video game consoles.
2007-07-14 01:57:43 · answer #1 · answered by trader 5 · 4⤊ 0⤋
A 3D hardware card accelerator will enable u using 3D animations, screensavers,etc on ur PC. Most of the games work on the 3D environment, so u need to have it for the same.
2007-07-14 18:33:11 · answer #2 · answered by shivank396 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You don't need it but you sure want one.
It is a card designed to do the video part of your computers work so the main processor doesn't have to.
They are usually optimized to make movies look better,
They always split the load with the computers main processor so the system run faster, especially when playing games. The speed difference can be huge! On my Athlon computer without the video card a game demo I have only plays at 3 frames per second so it looks VERY bad. With my very cheap video card ($50) it gets 29fps (over 9x faster and much smoother).
2007-07-14 09:15:02 · answer #3 · answered by Jason T 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
That is the legacy name of what is now popularly called a graphics card. 3D graphics acceleration is necessary so that 3D games would have fast frame rates and appear to the eye like a video. Without 3D acceleration, games would be slow and would look like a slide presentation.
2007-07-14 09:10:14 · answer #4 · answered by Karz 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Basically this 3d cards are being used in the graphic animations develpment and to use the games palyin and have more system resulution to see the picture quality in the systems.
2007-07-18 01:55:12 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
To keep it simple - its the hardware part which converts ones and zeros to something graphical.
The better the card, the better the speed of such calculations. You might find this articles pretty useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_card
2007-07-14 08:05:02 · answer #6 · answered by Scorpio 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋