Best graphics card for video game programming?

Question

hi

iam taking video game programmign course this semester.

and would like to know which graphics card to use in my windows machine to create decent video game graphics quality, and at affordable price. the card should have support for vertex and pixel shading.

Answer 1

NVIDIA has best graphics, support, and also avalible at offordable price.

Answer 2

Well i recommend you check out one of the many review websites, they usually also list the specifications of the cards they review and compare.

One of such websites would be http://www.gpureview.com/ - GPUReview

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php - Video Card Comparison

When you have found a card you like, simply do a search as of where you can get it at a reasonable prize. You would need to know more about hardware anyway eventually, chosing a graphics card is one of the easier matters.

Answer 3

Ugh... Whenever I hear about game programming colleges and the like, I feel like I'm gonna puke.

Truthfully, before making any kind of program that handles a significant amount of data and/or is CPU intensive (e.g. 3D games &  codecs ), it is better to know optimized programming.

To illustrate my point, think of a 'Hello World' console program.  It seems simple enough to make, but these days very, very few people know how to make an efficient one - including people who have been programming for YEARS.  Almost everyone would use something stupid like printf() or cout() in Windows.  Using a modern Microsoft C++ compiler, this results in an .exe file over 40KB in size, PLUS over 700KB of wasted memory on support .dlls.  

Here's my 'Hello World' console program:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

What I'm trying to say is that I think that it is better to use your time to learn to make more efficient programs, rather than to waste time trying to make an advanced type of program with bloated, slow code.  Besides, no REAL programmer ever bothered with video/computer game classes.



Anyway, to answer your question, any DirectX 10-capable video card is fine.  You should be able to pick up a DirectX 10 capable video card for less than $80.