What am i looking for when looking at a video card for a desktop?

what should i look for and what does it mean? i have specs for cards. it looks like this(no idea what they mean):



Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Codename: RV770

Process: 55nm

Universal Shaders: 800

Texture Units: 40

ROPs: 16

Memory Bus: 256-bit

Core Speed MHz: 625

Memory Speed MHz: 993 (1,986 effective)

DirectX/Shader Model: DX 10.1/SM 4.1|||the model #,,,tells you everthing...then google it for reviews..



here is a chart that shows the fastest, to slowest video card...the fastest cards are best for gaming..but expensive too.-



http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gamin…



and a chart for slower cards-

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gamin…



i also look at the memory speed sometimes..but usally everyone just goes by the model number...reviews are very important..just find a card that you might be interested in,,,and google the model # in google. and read the review....google like this- ati 4870 reviews.....hope this helps|||The Speed specs can be important to know if the card is overclocked.(overclocked may require extra cooling)

And the directx version is important for games.





Performance specs to look at are Memory Bandwidth,

Texture Fill Rate, and Pixel Fill Rate



Like they do at GPUReview



http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?…



You need to have a PCI-E graphics port to use that card.|||To answer you question. You are looking for:



1. Video Memory capacity, in this case it's 512 MB - higher is better, i.e. 876 MB, 1 GB, 1.7 GB, etc.



2. Speed(s), the higher the number the better.



Rule of thumb, the greater the number the better.|||Just look at the card benchmarks if you're not sure they will give you a general idea even if you don't know the terms...

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/