How to choose video card for motherboard and processor

Video card is one of the main components of any computer. Especially if we are talking about a powerful system unit, suitable not only for the browser. Currently on the market one can find hundreds of different video cards made by different companies. They are all of different levels and some are dozens of times more expensive than others. A video card is not an accessory, which should be chosen according to the principle “the more expensive it is – the better it will serve”. Of course, the more expensive is the video card, the more likely it is more powerful. But, it’s far from being true that it will fully open it’s potential with the processor that is used in your particular computer. In this article we will discuss a very important question: how to choose the right video card for the motherboard and the processor that you already have.

Table of contents:
1. How to choose video card for your motherboard
2. How to choose video card for your processor

How to choose video card for your motherboard

Nowadays it is quite easy to choose a video card for the motherboard if both components are bought new in the store. The thing is that several years ago there were adopted two standards of connectors that until now are used to connect a video card to the motherboard. We are talking about AGP and PCI Express. AGP connector started to loose it’s popularity due to it’s low bandwidth, but during the transition from one standard to another, it was possible to find video cards and motherboards corresponding to both standards, which caused confusion. Now most of the graphics cards and motherboards that you can buy in a computer store have the PCI Express standard.

The PCI Express connectors have various modifications, and this is something you need to know. In most cases on the motherboard beside the connector it will be written what kind of modifications it has (for example: PCIEX4, PCIEX8, PCIEX16). When installing the video card, priority should be given to the PCIEX16 connector.

How to choose video card for your processor

Choosing a video card for the motherboard is quite easy. It is much more difficult to choose the right one for the processor. The main trick here is that the processor should have enough power to fully disclose the performance of the video card. At the same time, as is known, the processor’s cost directly depends on the processor’s power, so it is not economical to acquire a “stone” with seriously high characteristics without taking a video card in consideration. But also it does not make any sense to acquire a powerful video card, if the computer has a weak processor.

It is extremely difficult to select a right video card for a processor, so we recommend using specialized websites on the Internet. Those websites where professionals publish their reviews for different processors and give recommendations on choosing video cards for them. Generally it is possible to summarize these reviews in the following way, roughly indicating how to properly choose a graphics card for the processor:

• Intel Core i3 processors. This processors will match with: GEFORCE GTX 950, GEFORCE GTX 670, GEFORCE GTX 660 Ti, Radeon R9 380, 370 video cards;
• Intel Core i5 processors. This processors will match with: GEFORCE GTX 970, GEFORCE GTX 780 Ti, Radeon R9 390, Radeon R9 380X video cards;
• Intel Core i7 processors. This processors will match with: GEFORCE GTX 1080, GEFORCE GTX 980 Ti, Radeon R9 Nano, Radeon R9 Fury, Radeon R9 390X video cards.

The general principle of choosing a video card for a processor lies in that simple fact that their power should be approximately comparable when using productive games and applications. Which means that when the video card is 100% loaded, the processor should not be loaded by more than 80%, and the remaining 20% ​​will be allocated for “reserve” and processing of various background tasks. If at some point it turns out that in productive games and applications your processor is completely loaded, while the video card load is less than 100%, it will mean that the video card power is used irrationally.

It is very important to understand that choosing a new video card, you need to focus on the processor that is installed in your computer. If it is significantly outdated, it does not make any sense to buy and install a powerful video card, because it will not give you a strong performance boost. If you do have a really weak processor, it’s better to think about replacing it with a video card together.