Video Adapter

Video adapter, VGA card or graphic card is a device that is used to produce the display images on the computer screen.  It can either be placed in the PCI slot of the motherboard or the motherboard has the built-in chip for the VGA cards.  An integrated VGA also known as integrated graphics processor.  Today all the modern video adapters are built on the VGA (Video Graphic Arrays). 

VGA card works between the system’s processor and the monitor. Video card gives the display capabilities to a computer.  Modern video adapters contain the built-in memory chip so that the computer’s RAM should not be used to store the graphics.  Each of the graphic cards offers several video modes such as text and graphics.  In the text mode, only the ASCII characters are displayed on the screen, and in the graphics mode, the bit-mapped images are displayed. 

Some monitors also show the choice of different resolutions and the computer user can select the best resolution according his/her choice.  The most common choices of the resolutions include 800 by 600, 1024 by 768, 1280 by 1024, and 1600 by 1200 pixels. VGA cards support four different resolution settings and the image refresh rates. Some of the video cards offer the added functionalities like video capture, TV tuner adapter, joy stick connectors and the ability to connect the two monitors with each other.

A typical video card contains the graphic processing unit, memory chip, RAMDAC, video BIOS and the output interfaces.  The main manufacturers of the VGA cards are Intel, Matrox, AMD, VIA technologies, NVIDIA, 3Com, ATI, Asus, Giga-byte technologies and 3D Labs. Many different types of the video cards standards are available but most popular are offered by the IBM and VESA.