Quadro FX 4400 512MB NVIDIA - PNY Graphics Card

CUDA technology is the world’s only C language environment that enables programmers and developers to write software to solve complex computational problems in a fraction of the time by tapping into the many-core parallel processing power of GPUs.

Explaining how a modern GPU works in completeness would take a book. Or two. Per class of chip. Per vendor. They’re extraordinarily complex pieces of engineering and production, and the end result contains more transistors than multiple modern x86 processors.

If you’re the least bit interested in graphics cards, we’re sure that you’ve heard the terms SLI and CrossFire bandied about recently. Touted as a means of achieving maximum 3D performance by, effectively, using two or more graphics cards in tandem, multi-GPU technology is here to stay. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look SLI and CrossFire; the two competing multi-GPU solutions from NVIDIA and ATI Technologies, respectively.

A motherboard’s main job is to act as a conduit between the various hardware elements that make up a PC. It needs to be able to link the desired CPU(s), system memory, graphics card, hard drive(s), and add-in cards and enable them to work in harmony.

Practically all broadcast and film production environments today incorporate real-time graphics in their broadcasted content to enhance, analyse or animate normal video material. This requires strong systems able to product graphics quickly enough for live TV, as well as to combine the two different signals - graphics and video.

Modern desktop computers and notebooks comprise of a CPU, motherboard, graphics, storage, and, usually an optical drive. Computers have a number of ports and sockets that enable the user to plug-in various peripherals such as a printer, USB mouse, or, perhaps most importantly of all, an Internet connection.

In computing terms, system buses are used to connect various components to the motherboard’s core logic and, often, to each other. Modern PCs run with a multitude of high-speed buses ranging from the interconnects between, say, the chipset and the CPU, graphics card, memory, and peripherals.

Updating drivers can sometimes be a bit of a gamble. Will the drivers come with an installer? Will you need to uninstall the old drivers first? Many drivers these days do come with an installer, which simplifies the process dramatically.

You’d be right to think that it’s possible to carry out basic video editing on any modern PC running Windows XP - straight out of the box. XP includes the Windows Movie Maker video-editing program and, although it lacks frills, it does what it does quite well.