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What is a 3D video card?

Updated: 10/5/2023
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7y ago

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The new market for 3D accelerators and 3D acceleration features has spawned a large crop of 3D video cards with varying capabilities. There are several different approaches that are taken to providing a system with 3D capabilities. While the available cards and technologies are changing rapidly, you will generally find that the cards on the market break out as follows:

* 2D Only (Conventional) Cards: These are regular video cards that do not incorporate any special 3D acceleration functions. Usually these are either older cards, or newer cards that are optimized for 2D performance. When using a card of this type, it is necessary to pair it with a 3D card to obtain 3D acceleration functions.

* Dedicated 3D Cards: These are accelerators that are designed only for 3D hardware functions. Since they do not do conventional 2D acceleration, they need to work with a 2D card in most cases to deliver good 2D+3D performance. Most of the higher-quality 3D cards are of this variety. They typically use a feature connector to connect directly to the 2D card. This lets the 3D card perform its acceleration functions to provide a video stream without requiring its own RAMDAC or bus control logic. This is generally the best solution for high-end graphics but it incurs the cost of two video cards.

* Combination 2D+3D Cards: In an effort to tackle the cost problem of using an additional, separate card for 3D acceleration, many companies are developing cards that perform both 2D and 3D functions. For many users, this is a good, cost-effective compromise. Most of these cards provide from moderate to good 2D performance, and support for some to most of the 3D acceleration features. However, like most compromises, these cards typically don't provide the level of performance or feature support that dedicated 3D cards do. It is important to research these cards well, since many of them support only a small subset of the 3D acceleration features found on 3D cards.

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Direct3D video cards are those which supports direct3D technology of Microsoft. Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX API. Direct3D is only for use in Microsoft's various Windows operating systems (Windows 95 and above) and, although in a quite different version, in the Xbox and the Xbox 360. Direct3D is used to render three dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D also allows applications to run fullscreen instead of embedded in a window, though they can still run in a window if programmed for that feature. Direct3D uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the graphic board. Direct3D is a 3D API. That is, it contains many commands for 3D rendering, but contains few commands for rendering 2D graphics. Microsoft strives to continually update Direct3D to support the latest technology available on 3D graphics cards. Direct3D offers full vertex software emulation but no pixel software emulation for features not available in hardware. For example, if a program programmed using Direct3D requires pixel shaders and the graphics card on the user's computer does not support that feature, Direct3D will not emulate it. The program will most likely exit with an error message. Although there is a REF device, it's too slow to be used in any application to emulate pixel shaders and is usually ignored. Direct3D's main competitor is OpenGL. There are numerous features and issues that proponents for either API disagree over, see Direct3D vs. OpenGL for a summary. If you find this info useful Please Vote!!! Answer: Direct3D is a Microsoft API (or set of instructions) which recent video cards support. If the game is prompting you about needing it, then either your current graphics adapter doesn't support it, or you don't have DirectX installed.

DirectX is a free download from Microsoft, although most games which require it, include some version with the game's installation. If you any further detail so you can visit : http://www.iyogibusiness.com

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