A graphics card is one of computer hard drive that arranges the videos and pictures that show up in your computer. So, the picture quality of your movies you watched or games you played are determined by your graphics card. The graphics card or often also called video card is placed and attached inside the motherboard. It has to be placed fit and securely in the motherboard. It is very important because your graphics is determined by video card.

You have to know that there many kinds of graphics or video card. You have to choose the best one to fix to your need. When you want to upgrade your graphics card, it is just a simple, because it is only about the matter of the slot. There are two slots; PCI or AGP, you can choose one of them for your graphics card. What slot you are going to choose is depended on your computer. AGP is a better one because it has a better technology, it transfer the data much faster than the PCI one. But it is different if your computer is under 2000 producing year, most of such kinds do not have AGP slot or maybe it will not be faster. AGP also has many different speeds; 1x, 2x and many more.

It is important for you to choose the best slot for your graphics card; which the best one AGP or PCI. Every computer certainly has PCI slot for the graphics card, so it is free for PCI graphics card to use in any computer. But if you need the faster graphics card, you should use the AGP one and be sure that your computer has the suitable slot. You can understand about it by asking to the costumer service of the computer manufacture via phone or email, reading the guideline book of your computer, or you can open your CPU to see the brown slot on the motherboard. The brown slot usually stands for the AGP graphics card and for the PCI graphics card; it is usually colored in white. But there are some computers make it different. The other thing you must remember is the AGP slot is smaller than the PCI’s. So you can see the differences without any hesitate of being fault.

There are still many people who can use a computer but they do not understand about what there inside. For you who do not know much, I tell you that there are two things about graphics card that should be known. First to know is the memory size. It is important to know how large the memories of graphics card RAM. The large memory is good to have, but it is better if it is suitable with our needs, what we are going to do with such memory, so that it will not be wasting much money. Second to know is how great the capability of the graphics card, because there are many unimportant technical terms such as floating points, pixels, etc. All the needs to see is the DirectX capabilities if you are a windows user. DirectX is the software that is usually used to process the information of the graphics; it means that you have to have a graphics card that used the newest DirectX version. You can know the most up to date version of DirectX by surfing in Microsoft website.

If you have made sure all of your tools and parts of your computer is fixed, you can just install the upgrading of your graphics card. It is just a simple thing to do. You just need to shut down your computer and make sure that every part has not been run. Then open up the case of you CPU and take the cover off, so can see the inside of the CPU. If there is still a useless slot, you can take it off and save it, it can be used next time you need it. This is a simple but all you have to concern is the careful. Make sure that you will not make some damages. Be careful when you remove the old graphics card.

Then, you can start to get your new graphics card out from the box and remove it from the cover. Move it in to the PCI or AGP slot on the motherboard. Push the new graphics card in its both sides so that it will totally fit to the slot. And then use a screwdriver to screw the graphics card into the slot holder so that it can not move to any where. Next, connect all of cable that have to be connected to the card such as a power supply connector, audio cable and many more. You have to make sure that everything is connected in the right place. You can read the manual of the card to avoid the connection fault.

When you have finished the card installation, you must put on your computer case back, plug everything back as before, and you have well done all of it. Try to start up your computer and your desktop need to be installed the card driver. You can install the driver from the CD or Floppy disk that you got from the graphics card. But if you desktop do not need the driver it means that it only needs the generic driver of the Windows. Now you have understood about the graphics card and how to install and upgrade it. You will need the knowledge sometimes. Do not be lazy in knowing and studying something because where ever you will go it will give advantages for you.