Technical data

Monitor Connectivity
Almost every graphics card today features connec-
tors for two monitors. Usually, cards will come with
one DVI-I connector for a digital monitor and one
standardVGA connector for CRTs. Adapters that
ship with the card also allow for a second analog
monitor to be used instead of a digital one. So, typ-
ically, the following combinations are possible: 1x
VGA, 1x DVI, 2x VGA or 1x DVI & 1x VGA. If
you’re planning to hook up two digital (TFT)
monitors to your card, you should look for cards
with two DVI-I connectors; these are becoming
more and more popular.Their flexibility allows for
practically any combination of monitors.
If you intend to use more than two monitors,
you will either have to buy a more expensive
workstation card, or take a look at Matrox’s selec-
tion of multi-head cards.ATI offers another alter-
native in the form of its IGP 9100 motherboard
chipset sporting integrated graphics.Thanks to its
SurroundView feature, the on-board graphics can
remain active even when an add-in card is installed
in the motherboard.As a result, up to three displays
can be attached to one computer. However, for
gaming purposes, simply hooking up several moni-
tors to your system won’t be enough.You can find
a little guide here:
http://graphics.tom
shardware.com/graphic/20040216/
index.html.
Another factor that is an unknown at present is the
impact of PCI Expre s s , or more pre c i s e l y, m o t h e r-
b o a rds with several x16 PEG slots. S e veral such
chipsets have already been announced but have not
yet been released by their re s p e c t ive manu f a c t u r e r s .
At present, only a few graphics cards come with
two DVI(-I) monitor outputs, for connection with
digital flat-panel monitors. A combination of 1x
VGA and 1x DVI(-I) connectors is more common.
Dual DVI-I is the more future-proof choice, even if
you only attach analog monitors at present (using
adapters – see next picture).
Using special adapters, analog monitors can be
hooked up to DVI-I connectors. In most cases, a
graphics card will ship with such an adapter.
Video In & Out
Nearly all cards come equipped with video-out
functionality, but video-in features are much rarer.
Often video-in is only present on so-called "ViVo"
models, which offer connection options for video
sources via composite (RCA video) or S-VHS
cables. However, these are of no help for connect-
ing digital video cameras, as these tend to require a
FireWire jack that is only rarely found on a graph-
ics card.You can only watch television via video-in
if the source signal is coming from a tuner, i.e. a
video recorder, satellite receiver or TV.
As an alternative, graphics cards with an integrat-
ed TV tuner are also available. ATI offers its All-in-
Wonder series, while NVIDIA sells its Personal
Cinema line. Of course, these cards cost more than
the standard models. Also, bear in mind that you
will lose all of the functionality come the next
graphics card upgrade (unless you buy a newer ver-
sion of these cards, again at an additional expense.)
If you consider yourself a frequent upgrader, you
should probably opt for an add-in TV card instead.
It is important to understand that even cards with
video-in functionality are not "real" video capture,
cutting and/or editing cards. Although modern
cards offer hardware-supported encoding of video
THG Graphics Card
Buyers Guide
23