Graphics Cards. Two is company, three is even better but it costs ya..

Graphics Cards. Back when I built computers, I installed video cards and what not, there were two types. Color Cards and Monochrome cards. Now, computer motherboards have chipsets which do the job of color cards. So why put in a graphics card, when one is already on the motherboard? Well, the onboard graphics don't run the latest computer games and if you are into design or creating videos, you need the extra power and abilities of what is known as a Discreet Graphics Card. If you are just using the computer to blog,  read news, shop or play a few flash games, you probably won't need one. However, if you want to do more, you need a graphics card.

The next question is why install two? Well, speed mainly. It takes a lot of number crunching and two split up the tasks. One does the top half, the other does the bottom and then sends it to the monitor. Since, two do such a good job, a third one would help also right? Well, yes. It would help. Pricing is the usual bottleneck. To work properly, you need two identical cards with the requisite technology and the operating system that can handle it.  With three, you need three identical cards and there is even one that has four graphics cards.

Here is the deal.

SLI also known as  Scalable Link Interface makes it possible for a computer to use more than one graphics card. It helps speed up creating pictures. It also helps with zooming. It makes it smoother and easier to use.

Two considerations. First costs. Second cooling. I'll deal with cooling first. Because of imperfect knowledge, I burned up two boards using a new game. Now, I will set up two boards and add heatsinks to the backs of the boards. My hopes are that using  the two boards with heatsinks will keep me from burning them up again.

Now Costs. The video/graphics cards I am getting are EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Superclocked  01G-P3-1563-AR. I need to get two of them. These are the mid-range ones. Just one costs $249.99. A heatsink which improves the cooling characteristics cost $19.99. That brings the total for two cards to $536.96. Since a motherboard and processor are less than $500, you can see how getting a mid-range card is expensive. Getting more than one card, while it improves the graphics it starts getting expensive. Going with three, $809.94, and four $1079.92. I am saved from the folly of buying more than two because the Mother board I am getting only supports two nVidia style video cards.

The second picture shows the end of the card. These cards need an extra little bit more power, so you need to plan ahead with connectors. Also, you can see the top connectors for SLI. The last one has one mini HDMI port and two DVI-I ports. It is obvious these cards take up two expansion slots in the computer.

Next up: Hard Drives, and Solid State Drives.