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Graphics Cards
There are many graphics cards manufacturers, but they all build their
cards based on the graphic processors of one of two companies, nVidia
& ATI.
Both companies have been producing graphics cards since the dawn of
computer time so to speak and there is a mind boggling choice of
graphics cards available based on many many different chipsets, the
two main ones being nVidia's GeForce chips and ATI's Radeon chips.
Deciding which is the best available is a matter only for the lab technicians and unless
you are an addicted gamer or into heavy video editing, a middle of the range card will suffice for
most tasks.
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Hard Disks
The cost of hard disks has fallen dramatically in recent years while
the reliability and storage capacity has risen terrifically. This is
the component that appears on your system as the C: Drive and it's
where all information is stored when you install a program such as
Microsoft Windows.
Today, storage capacity is measured in billions of bytes and rather
than say you have a 20,000,000,000 byte hard disk it is abbreviated to
a 20 gigabyte, or 20GB hard disk.
20GB is probably the smallest hard disk commercially available today
but a minimum hard disk size of 80GB is usually considered the norm.
Like all the other components that go into making up your computer
system there are several different options.
Apart from the storage space the two main differences are the way in
which the hard disk is connected to the motherboard and the access
speed of the disk itself.
Connectors
The most common way of connecting a hard drive to a motherboard is
still using a flat ribbon IDE parallel cable. This will suffice for
most systems but Serial ATA hard disks are becoming more common in
systems today and the main advantages of these types of hard disks are
that the SATA connection allows faster data transfer rates (typically
one third faster than standard IDE connections) and also the type of
cable used is much smaller and less obtrusive and helps increase air
flow and cooling inside a case.
Speeds
Apart from the interface connector speeds, the access speeds of the
disks themselves is an important factor to consider. There are 3
standard access speeds. The slowest speed that a hard disk spins at is
5,400 revolutions per minute and only the cheapest disks would be
found using this outdated technology.
By far the most common rotation speed of today's hard disks is 7,200 RPM.
Those wishing to maximise performance, gamers & video editors for
example may choose a SATA hard disk with a speed of 10,000
RPM. These disks are widely available but still nowhere near as common
as the standard IDE 7,200 RPM disks.
For extra fast access speeds and/or backup & security, two SATA hard
disks could be connected in a RAID array increasing the speed further.
This is usually only supplied on our top of the range systems but we
are happy to explain the options further if you wish. Please contact
us for more details.
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