Selecting a video card upgrade can be a very intimating task. ATI and NVIDIA, the two major players that develop graphics processing units, are constantly updating and changing the models they offer. If you do not do your research, than it is a good possibility that you could purchase an old outdated graphic technology. Here are some things you need to know about video cards before buying.

It is well known that a high end video card has a decent amount of memory to play games at high-resolution with quality graphics settings enabled. Top end video cards usually have lots of memory because all of that GPU horsepower will be wasted. However, the video card manufacturers have caught on that most people are looking at memory size as one of the main comparison point. Today it is not uncommon to see cards with low end GPUs with a lot of memory. Don't be fooled

Memory is important, but the most important part of the video card is the graphics processing unit. When you're browsing through video card names, the most important thing to look for is the GPU type. The GPU is the chip responsible for all of the video card's 3D performance. Today's best GPUs come from Nvidia and ATI, but it's not enough just to buy a video card with a "Nvidia GeForce" or "ATI Radeon" GPU. I suggest reading a few reviews of video cards before purchasing.

GPUs now have specialized processing units dedicated to process complex vertex and pixel-shader programs. Shader units are increasingly becoming an important specification to watch in future video cards as games become more shader-intensive.

Currently a video card can be evaluated by the GPUs pixel pipelines. Entry-level cards usually have four pixel pipelines. Midrange cards have 8 or 12 pipelines, and high-end cards have 16 or more pipelines. A common question is if you should have less pipelines at a higher speed or more piplines at a slower speed. Having eight pipelines running at 600MHz is much better than having four pipelines running at 800MHz.