Ok, I know that to most people in the world, a computer graphics card is well… totally uninteresting. However, to the PC gamer, they are the most important component. This is evident when a lot of upgrade guides will list upgrading the graphics card as one of the easiest way to breathe new life into a gaming oriented PC (the next would be memory, CPU and a faster HD - by then, you’d have upgraded the whole computer ;)). Graphics cards can also be one the most expensive components in a regular PC, up to US 600 for the high-end cards. With SLI/Crossfire, a way of pairing cards to increase performance, we’re looking at US 1000 and above in graphics hardware purchase alone. So, being informed for the purchase is the least you could do

Toms Hardware has written a really good series of articles to help deciphering all the weird acronyms that are thrown around in video card reviews (well, at least till DX10 comes around, which no doubt will bring a flurry of new ones). The articles are not in-depth, but I’m sure they weren’t meant to be. There are more technical articles, dwelling deep into a certain family of graphics cards (e.g. the nvidia 6 series, 7 series or the ATI X1000 series), usually right before the launch of those cards. Try looking at other articles from Toms Hardware, AnandTech or ArsTechnica if that’s your thing.

I’ve been away from the video hardware world for quite a while and found the article a good refresher.

Graphics Beginners’ Guide, Part 1: Graphics Cards
Graphics Beginners’ Guide, Part 2: Graphics Technology
Graphics Beginners’ Guide, Part 3: Graphics Performance | Tom’s Hardware