Newbie looking for some advice

[simplestudent]

Hello Tom's Hardware Community,

I will be the first to admit that I am still new to the computer field. However, I am taking courses to further my education about this growing field. Currently I'm doing research on Graphic Cards. How they work, what the details mean, and how to compare one card to the next. I have been referred by a couple of my friends to this site and this community of people. The content and the knowledge found here is held in high regard. This is why I turn to you. I'm looking for other informative sites specifically about graphic cards. How they work and what that page of details means. I would appreciate any advice or direction that you may have to offer as your are the professionals and I am simple just a student eager to learn. I have read through the beginners guide on this site and it has helped me a great deal. I'm looking to take it further and move into greater detail on the certain aspects of the graphic card. What the speeds mean and how do the relate to each other? Where does the data tend to bottleneck and what steps can be taken to fix this problem and end up with the best results for someones particular needs. Thanks in advance for any information or direction you can give.

 

[funguseater]

This is a pretty complicated topic, hope you have some spare time

Some reading material (its pretty dense but you can Google for unfamiliar concepts) http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~gfx/papers/pdfs/59_HowThingsWork.pdf

Guide to model numbers... http://blog.kingj.net/2008/10/20/uncategorized/a-guide-to-graphics-card-model-numbers/

Tom's review of 32 mid-range cards... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-radeon-graphics,2977.html


It seems hard to find a general FAQ or Topic about this... maybe my search skills are lacking though...

Some things to know:

1: Memory bandwidth is IMPORTANT (there are still cards with 32bit and 64bit bus too small, I have the HD5750 with 128bit but I wish it was bigger maybe 256, bigger the pipe more data can be filled on screen per sec)

2: Nvidia and AMD specs are apples and oranges, the specs are not interchangeable as they use different technology.

The fastest way I found to learn about specific GPU's is to Google for reviews, and read a lot of the Tom's best GPU articles, after reading through a few and looking up unfamiliar technical terms you will come to understand the differences between the different clocks, ROP's and such.

 

[simplestudent]

Thanks for the quick response. I will take a look at your links. I think The first one may be a little more then I was looking for at the moment. However it is something that I will browse as I get more familiar with this topic. Currently I am trying to understand the numbers. Example: A Card with 822MHz and 384 Processor Cores. How does this card compare to one with a faster speed but less cores? This in addition to memory speed and type, bus speed and size, and other factors that effect the performance.

 

[inzone]

There are a lot of different factors that go into the operation of the many different cards from the inexpensive to the high priced top of the line cards.
While core speed is important , bandwidth is more important as you need to get them textures loaded as quickly as possible. The gpu chip can be overclocked just like a cpu chip can be and the faster the speed the better the card and the game will perform. Just like a cpu being overclocked the stability of the gpu being overclocked is just as important as you want the gpu to be as stable as possible. The bandwidth is a main function of the card and the high end cards have more of it.Some of the top cards have 384 bit and 384 bit X2 others have 256 bit , then you get to the lower cards and the bandwidth drops to 192 bit and 128 bit. So as a customer buying a card these are the things they will be looking for alomg with the ram amount and if you want to get really into it then you start looking at the shaders and the stream processors.

 

[funguseater]

The only way to really compare is by reading the benchmark tests, there are just too many variables. For instance my HD5750 has less cores than the 5770 but after I overclock the core speed it out performs the stock 5770. Plus there are generational changes like tessellation that is greatly improved in the 6000 series.

On the NVidia side there is also PhyX to take into account. (only for a few games tho)

One thing I noticed on my card is that core frequency is much more important than memory clock. Generally speaking the more cores the better, you can always overclock your speed but you can't (normally) add processing units. The more bandwidth the better, go for at least 256bit.