| A
video card to help you out
Last week I suggested why your system’s video card is the
component responsible for producing the visual output from your
computer. Virtually all programmes produce visual output. Processing
all that information is too much of a burden for the main microprocessor
to bear, so the video card is the piece of hardware that takes that
output and tells the monitor which of the dots on the screen to
light up (and in what colour) to allow you to see it.
Like most parts
of the PC, the video card had very humble beginnings. In its early
days, it was only responsible for taking what the processor produced
as output and displaying it on the screen.
Early on, this
was simply text, and not even colour at that. Video cards today
are much more like coprocessors; they have their own intelligence
and do a lot of processing that would otherwise have to be done
by the system processor. This is a necessity due to the enormous
increase both in how much data we send to our monitors today, and
the sophisticated calculations that must be done to determine what
we see on the screen. This is particularly so with the rise of graphical
operating systems, and 3D computing.
The video card in your system plays a significant role in the following
important aspects of your computer system:
Performance
The video card is one of the components that have an impact on system
performance. For some people (and some applications) the impact
is not that significant; for others, the video card’s quality
and efficiency can affect performance more than any other component
in the PC. For example, many games that depend on a high frame rate
(how many times per second the screen is updated with new information)
for smooth animation are impacted far more by the choice of video
card than by the choice of system CPU.
Software
support
Certain programs require support from the video card. The software
that normally depends on the video card the most includes games
and graphics programmes. Some programmes (for example 3D-enhanced
games) will not run at all on a video card that doesn’t support
them.
Reliability
and stability
While not a major contributor to system reliability, choosing the
wrong video card can cause problematic system behaviour. In particular,
some cards or types of cards are notorious for having unstable drivers,
which can cause many difficulties.
Comfort
and ergonomics
The video card, along with the monitor, determine the quality of
the image you see when you use your PC. This has an important impact
on how comfortable the PC is to use. Poor quality video cards don’t
allow for sufficiently high refresh rates, causing eyestrain and
fatigue.
There are many
brands of video cards in the market and there is much debate about
which is best. What matters most when choosing ‘the best’
video card is personal preference and specific needs of the individual
user. But if you are about to buy a new PC, then this is one factor
that you should pay adequate attention, because as I mentioned earlier,
the performance of the video card has a profound and direct effect
on overall system performance and even your physical health, especially
your eyes!
Press
box
New European agency to defend online security
The European Union recently agreed to create an agency to improve
Internet security, seeking to lead global efforts to protect against
computer hackers, viruses and fraud. The European Network and Information
Security Agency will advise regulators about risks to electronic
information systems; address problems with hardware and software
products; and cooperate with non-EU nations and organizations.
DNA
Transistor
Scientists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have
developed a nanoscale transistor with DNA proteins that self-assembles
instead of having to be painstakingly put together molecule by molecule.
Transistors, which can be switched on and off by applying an electric
current to them, are the building blocks of electronics. Science
has been intrigued with the idea of using biology to build electronic
transistors that assemble without human manipulation. While this
demonstrates the feasibility of harnessing biology as a framework
to construct electronics, the researchers point out that creating
working electronics from self-assembling carbon nanotube transistors
is still in the future.
Internet
treasures
The outsourcing of business operations via the Internet could earn
some of the world’s poorest countries billions of dollars
over the next few years, according to a United Nations study. The
UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) says even countries
with minimal telecommunications infrastructure and low education
levels can offer basic business process outsourcing (BPO) services
such as data entry. The report points out that offshore outsourcing
could generate about 3.3 million jobs worldwide by 2015; 2.3 million
of them in India and most of the rest in developing nations.
The services
on offer also range widely, from banking and credit card services
to marketing and web services, and from routine payroll processing
to specialized graphics and animation. In particular, the report
recommends the use of free and open-source software, which it says
can “Dramatically improve the digital inclusion of the developing
world,” by reducing barriers to market entry, cutting costs
and promoting the rapid expansion of skills and technology. For
more details visit www.unctad.org
Intel
set to break the 4GHz barrier with “Prescott”
Intel says it aims to boost the performance of a broad range of
its products next year, including cranking up its desktop PC processors.
“Our goal is to hit 4GHz in 2004,” Intel president Paul
Otellini said during a meeting that was webcast. Intel is aiming
to reach that clock speed with Prescott, an upcoming processor for
desktop computers that will be built using a 90-nanometer manufacturing
process. (A nanometer is one billionth of a metre.) Prescott is
not expected to come in desktop PCs until early next year. Right
now, Intel’s fastest chip is the 3.2GHz Pentium 4. Google
News
Improve
your computer literacy
Lost cluster - Also called a lost allocation unit, or a lost file
fragment. A data fragment that does not belong to any file according
to the system’s file management system, and, therefore is
not associated with a file name in the file allocation table. Lost
clusters can result from files not being closed properly, from shutting
down a computer without first closing an application or from ejecting
a storage medium, such as a floppy disk, from the disk drive while
the drive is reading or writing.
Disk image
- Also called a disk clone, an exact copy of a computer’s
hard drive. The copy includes all the partition information, boot
sectors, the file allocation table, operating system installation
and application software. Disk images are used to transfer a hard
drive’s contents during a hardware upgrade, to restore a hard
drive’s contents during disaster recovery or when a hard drive
is erased, and to transfer the contents of a hard drive from one
computer to another.
The process
of creating a disk image is called disk imagine or disk cloning.
Typically, special disk imaging software is required to copy the
hard drive data.
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