INFO 450Video Card's, Monitor's, 

Chris Adkins, Kristin Tippett, and Donnie Wood

Different types of Hardware for your

computer• Adapter Cardso Graphics Cardso Sound Cards

• RAID Cards• eSATA Cards

o I/O Cards• Wired And Wireless Network

Cards• Capture Cards

Adapter Cards

• An Adapter Card (which is also known as an expansion card) is a circuit board that's put into a expansion slot of a motherboard to give more functionality to the computer.  o The main focus of an Adapter card is to provide

 features that are not normally offered on some motherboards Graphics Cards Sound Cards Network Cards

Graphics Cards    

• A graphics card (aka Video Adapter, Graphics Accelerator Card, Display Adapter, or video card)  is an expansion card that generates output images to a display monitor.o Added features to a graphics card

3D rendering video recording MPEG-2/-4 decoding (compressing of videos) Light pen TV Output Multi-Monitors

PCI AGP or PCIeVideo/Graphic Cards

PCI•  Peripheral

component interconnect

•  Uses bus architecture

• Can be integrated circuit fitted onto the mother board or an expansion card

• Coexist with other expansion buses

• "Plug and Play

AGP• Accelerated

Graphics Port• Originally

created for 3-D computer graphics

• Provides dedicated pathways between the slot and the processor

• Point-to-Point connection allowing higher clock speeds

PCIe• Express• Replaced AGP

and older PCI versions

•  Uses Point-to-Point serial connection rather than shared parallel communication

•  Not compatible in PCI slots

• Multiple data lanes

http://www.professormesser.com/free-a-plus-training/220-701/bus-architectures-and-expansion-slots

Things to Keep in mind

• Bigger Monitors with higher resolution (while running the same program) need better video cards

• Make sure your Power Supply has enough power to support your Videocard

• Making sure your output is supportedo Blue Ray will need a video card which supports:

HDMI HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content

Protection) Allows you to stream blue ray from your

Video card to the TV)

Things to keep in mind cont.

• Running 2 Video Cards at onceo Depends on the chipset of your motherboard

Scalable Link Interface (SLI) Nividia chipset that allows you to run multiple videocards

Crossfire is a Intel chipset that allows multiple video cards to run

Need a USB 2.0 Display Adapter to run  Multi-Monitor  while using SLI/Crossfire

Overclocking and Benchmarking

• Overclocking- Process of running the video card at a higher bits/second than it was meant for.  It's used for minimizing/maximizing performance.

• Benchmarking- Tests a video card performance and then gives results to compare to other benchmarkers.o http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

Multimedia CardsSound cards, TV tuner

cards, Capture cards

Sound Cards• Sound Cards (aka Audio Cards) is an Adapter Card

that enable's the input and output of audio signals between the itself and the computer.o Multiple inputs:

Pink- Microphone input Blue- Audio input Green- Audio output

Front speakers  Headphones

Brown- Audio output for Right to Left Speaker Black- Audio output surround sound speakers Orange- Audio output for subwoofer

TV Tuner Cards• Computer component that allows television signals

to be received by a computer• 4 components are required to make this happen

1.A tuner device»An antenna or cable connection»A tuning application »Some sort of program guide

 

Video Capture Cards• Video capture cards are designed to plug directly

into expansion slots in personal computers and servers

• All comply with one of the popular host bus standards (PCI, AGP, and/or PCIe)

• Proper hardware and software are necessary to transport the captured video to the computer

• Problems arise with dropped frames, problems synchronizing audio and video, and poor quality play back.

RAID Cards• RAID Controller Cards are pieces of hardware

dedicated to controlling RAID functions.o RAID chips can be integrated into the Motherboardo RAID Controller Cards will come in the form of PCI,

or PCIe• RAID 0 and RAID 1 can be setup either by software,

or hardware.  RAID 5 is setup by hardware.

I/O Cards

• Input/ Output (I/O) cards are cards that provide some sort of external connectivity.

o USB, Parallel, SATA, SCSI, and NIC/WNIC cards Although often times USB, Parallel, and SCSI

cards are very much out of date.  Now integrated in with the Motherboard.

o Often times I/O Cards are labeled as "Low Profile Cards" which are cards that fit in smaller computer towers.

SCIS: Small Computer Interface System• Pronounced "scuzzy"• Involve chains, IDs, and termination • Chains: a series of SCSI devices working together

through a host adapter (the host adapter provides the interface between the SCSI chain and the PC)

• Categorized as internal and external devices• IDs: range from 0-15, doesn't matter which device

gets which number and numbers can be skipped but none can be the same

• Termination: Only terminate the ends of the SCSI chain. Some devices come automatically able to terminate others need to be set. Termination is used to prevent the electrical echo.

SCSI

http://www.ehow.com/video_4987275_connect-scsi-scanner-computer.html

Serial Cards• Replaced by USB•  One of the last manually configured ports• Serial communication: one wire to send data and

another wire to receive data one bit at a time sequentially

• The job of a serial port is to convert data moving between parallel and serial devices

• Serial ports consist of two pieces:1.9-pin DB connector– UART chip

• The UART chip actually does the conversion between the serial data and parallel data

• Universal asynchronous receiver     /transmitter

Parallel Cards• Also known as the printer port• Faster alternative to serial communication • Parallel communication: sending several data signals

simultaneously over several parallel channels•  IEEE 1284 is a standard that defines bi-

directional parallel communications between computers and other devices

•  Max data transfer rate: 150 kilobytes per second• Use up a considerable amount of CPU• Replaced by USB

USB: Universal Serial Bus• Replaced serial and parallel ports/cards• Used to establish communication between devices

and a host controller• USB host controller: integrated circuit that is usually

built into the chipset and controls every USB device that connects to it

• USB root hub: the part on the host controller that makes the physical connection to the USB ports

• No limit to number of ports a single host adapter may use

• Most important thing to remember is that every USB device connected to a single host adapter/root hub shares that USB bus with every other device connected to it

• The more USB devices connected result in the bus slowing down and more power being used

"Low Profile Cards:"eSATA Cards

• External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (eSATA) o SATA is a computer bus port that connects Host

Bus Adapters to Storage devices.o eSATA cards will take up a PCI or PCIe slot.

Network Cards

• Network Interface Controller (NIC) is a card that connects the computer to a network.  o Connects via a wire based network

Ethernet- frame-based technologyo NIC's are an OSI Layer 1, and layer 2 device

Open Systems Interconnection Model (OSI) makes up seven layers.  Layer 1 is the physical layer, and layer 2 is the data link layer

o 48-bit serial number: Media Access Control (MAC) Address Stored in ROM, every card has a unique address No 2 cards will have the same address.

Wireless NIC's

• Wireless Network Interface Controller (WNIC)o NIC that connects to radio-based network.o Works on OSI Layers 1 and 2.  o Uses antenna's to send signals through

microwaves.o Connects through PCI Slots, or USB.

Display Devices

• Three main types: •  Projectors

 • CRT

 • LCD

Projector

• Projects an image or moving images onto a surface usually a projection screen

  •   Been used throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in places such

as movie theatres and classrooms    

CRT• Stands for Cathode Ray Tube which is a vacuum consisting of one

or more electron guns •  Color CRT tubes use three different phosphors which emit red,

green and blue light • CRTs have been phased out, mainly because of the advance of

LCD technology 

LCD• Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)- Thin Electronic Visual Display that

uses light properties of liquid crystalso Six levels of display

Polarizing filter with a vertical axis which polarizes light Glass Substrate with Vertical ridges that appear whtn the

monitor turns on Twisted nematic, which contains elements that twist and

untwist at different degrees to let light go through Glass substrate with horizontal ridges to line up with the filter Polarizing filter with a horizontal axis which blocks and

passes light Reflective screen to send light back to the user. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LCD_layers.svg  

Resolution

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vector_Video_Standards2.svg

Contrast Ratio and Native Resolution• Contrast Ratio

o Ratio of luminous intensity of white to black that the Monitor is able to show

 • Native Resolution

o LCD Monitors have a single fixed resolutiono While a  CRT Monitor displays at different resolutions, an LCD

needs to have a scaling of the image which is lower qualityo  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Native-resolution_800x600_on_1024x768.JPG

Connection Devices• VGA

  • Component/RGB

  • S-Video

  • HDMI

  • DVI 

Types of DVI

 

Settings of the Monitor

• Refresh Rate- The Frame rate of how many times in a second that the display device fraws the data

  • Degaussing- Process of getting rid of  magnetic field

  • Multi-Monitor- use of multiple displays

o Monitorso Televisiono Projectors

"How to choose a video card"

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qdRm3KkGV8o Computer TV

Works Cited• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_card•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_card•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_interface_controller•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_network_interface_card•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_communication•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_communication•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCIe• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Graphics_Port•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB•  Michael Meyers: A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition  ,

Mc Graw Hill.  ,February 2010 • http://www.slideshare.net/topitexam/cheattest-220601-comptia-a-practice-questions-and-answe

rs-2009• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_display_resolutions#UXGA_.281600.C3.

971200.29

Works Cited (cont.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_resolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vector_Video_Standards2.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_video 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface