ATI Graphics Card

The ATI graphics card is rated among the best graphics card around.

ATI is a leading provider of graphics cards for computers and is constantly pushing the envelope for new technologies in the graphics card industry. ATI’s offerings are primary in the higher end cards. They are known for providing the best graphics cards for gaming and 3D programming. But they also make cost efficient graphics cards for those who don’t need so much power.

Here some things you should think about when you are looking to buy and ATI graphics card.

• Do you really need this graphics card or is the one you have already an ATI card? And is that one sufficient enough for your purpose?
• If you need an ATI graphics card, what grade of card do you need? Under $100 is considered low grade. Above $200 is mid grade and above $400 is considered high grade.
• What slot does your computer have for a graphics card? PCI Express, PCI, or AGP? The latter two are the older slots. The PCI express is the fastest of the three slots.

The following are some of the more popular ATI graphics cards that have received positive reviews on Amazon.com.   

Diamond Radeon HD 4650 

The Radeon HD 4650 is built for work and play. It can handle Blu-ray and HD-DVD videos in full resolution without a hiccup. It performs as expected without overloading your computers CPU. It has 1 GB of memory, is fast as lightning with a core clock running at 600Mhz and the memory clock running at 500Mhz. It has 4 Dual Link DVI, PCI Express ready with 2.0 support and a 32GB per second memory bandwidth. It has a built in HDMI for your Hi Def applications and 7.1 surround sound audio capabilities. The ATI PowerPlay technology will help conserve energy. You need to have at least a gigabit of system memory and a 400 watt power supply in your PC. 

ATI 100-435317 Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition for G5 256MB AGP Video Card 

Mac lovers need a gaming graphics card too and what better ATI graphics card can you get than the Radeon X800 XT. This graphics card delivers the ultimate HD gaming experience from the advanced programmable shaders allowing gamers to max the settings on this massive card. Gamers will come to appreciate the visual realism and life like graphics from the latest in ATI image enhancement, compression and acceleration technologies. 

There are no more worries for you 3D programmers as this graphics card will not slow you down when creating your content. Whether you use Maya or Motion fast rendering just got faster even at higher resolutions. As a result you will see your productivity increase through improved web graphics and monitor performance. 

ATI has doubled the performance of the XT Mac edition over the Radeaon 9800 Pro through faster pixel fill rate, memory bandwidth, and geometry performance. The acceleration on the graphics card is quiet with a variable speed fan-sink cooling device leaving your other PCI slots available for encoder cards and the like. Because this unit is so efficient there is no need for an external power cable. There are boat load of technologies that have gone into this graphics card making it one of the most sought after on the market. 

The minimum requirements for this ATI graphics card is a Power Mac 5, 512 MB of memory and a CD drive to install the software. The OS needs to me 10.3.6 or higher. You get a three-year hassle free ATI manufacturer warranty to boot. 

XFX HD489AZDFC Radeon HD 4890 1.0 GB DDR5 PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card

Much like the XT describes above this ATI graphics card takes maximum advantage of DirectX 10 technology in games like “Hawx” giving a true HD resolution experience at the highest performance anisotropic filtering possible. Your Blue-ray experience will not lag either as this graphics card brings you full 1080p resolution. It doesn’t matter if you are a geeked out gamer or an IMDB know it all the XFX Radeon HD 4890 absolutely strikes like lightning.