Key Factors to consider while selecting a Graphics Card.
Price: It is recommended that you decide the price range as per your budget and create a list of graphics cards that you can afford before you consider the remaining factors and make a final decision.
CPU Performance: If your system runs on a low-end motherboard then it is futile to purchase a very high-end graphics card because the performance of your system will be bound by the CPU’s specifications.
RAM Size: As a general rule of thumb, the more RAM your graphics card has, the better its performance will be. These days, good cards comes with starting from 4GB to 16, 32, 64GB or more. Increased RAM will increase its price too. However, there is no point in spending more money for extra RAM in case your applications usually do not consume that much RAM.
RAM Type: Graphics cards are available in variants with different RAM types; RAM types basically govern the speed of memory transactions, which in turn directly affects performance. For example, GDDR5 provides faster memory transactions as compared to DDR3 and therefore delivers a better performance.
Display Requirements: You must ensure that the graphics card should provide a good performance with the resolution and refresh rate of your display. Also, make sure that the graphics card contains the display port of the type that your monitor supports and that the number of display ports is sufficient for the number of monitors that you plan to connect to your system. For example, if you use a 4K display with HDMI port, you must ensure that the card has a HDMI port, as well us can support 4K resolution output flawlessly at the desired refresh rate.
Benchmark Scores: Several sites provide benchmark scores for different graphics cards. You can find out which benchmark generates a similar workload to the applications that you intend to use and check which graphics cards provide a good score with that benchmark.
Power Consumption: It is intuitive that higher performance implies higher power consumption. You need to strike a balance between the two factors and go for a graphics card with an optimal performance as per your needs, with reasonable power consumption.
Cooling Requirements: Some manufacturers provide additional fans on the graphics card for extra cooling. If your system is prone to heating up quickly then it is a good idea to go for a graphics card with additional fans. High end cards generally employ more specialized cooling system beside just common heat-sink or fans.
These are some of the important factors that you need to analyze before deciding which graphics card is best suited to your needs. The next slide describes the best graphics cards that are currently available in the market for different performance and price ranges.
In the next article here, we shall look at the twelve best graphics card of 2017, from High-end to Budget-friendly, taking consideration of all the above factors.
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