how can you tell which GPU, or video card, is better than another?

BRO.... note than THE GPU RAM IS NOT MUCH IMPORTANT.. ... a 513mb gpu can be better than even 2gb... I'll tell u how to compare gpus:

1) first u have to check the no of cores the gpu has.. this is the most important thing u should note ...more cores more powerful the gpu is... but note that CUDA cores r more powerful than stream or any other cores...

2) the memory bandwith

there r many other things like type of ram as DDR5 »ddr3 etc

the easiest thing by which u can compare is this website:

www.gamedebate.com

this website gives every gpu & cpu ratings acc to their specs.. just go there & select the gpu...

regards

There are a few things to be considered about the graphics cards, these are:

1. Amount of memory (RAM)

2. Memory type and its frequency.

3. Core clock frequency

4. Does it have the output(s) you need.

5. Power consumption

Also you can't really tell if one is better than the other just by looking at their specs.

Check out benchmarks if you want to compare two graphics card.

You should consider the following:

- how much power do you have to run the card? the better video cards require 125+ W

- how much space do you have in your tower? the better video cards are longer than many towers will allow

- do you have air flow/cooling sufficient to run a higher end video card?

Beyond this, the technical differences are harder to understand. You should also pay attention to additional modifiers at the end, such as GT, GS, GTX, XT, and XTX, since they often reveal important shader and clock-speed information

you can judge current GPUs by the number of pixel pipelines they have - high-end cards have 16 or more pipelines. Higher clock speeds are also always better, but if you're choosing between pipelines or clock speeds, it's usually better to select more pipes over more MHz. Having eight pipelines running at 400MHz is much better than having four pipelines running at 500MHz.

The amount of video memory in a graphics card is not reflective of its performance, just like how a 1TB computer is not necessarily faster than a 500GB computer.

The amount of video memory tells you how much video processes it can hold at a time, but it does not tell you how fast it will process them.

To see how good a video card is, its clock speed, bit-rate and memory speed needs to be looked at.

The following website ranks all the laptop graphic chips for easy comparison:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards...

Internet is the answer!

You're looking for Benchmarks.

There are lots of hardware review sites, I recommend TOMSHARDWARE, because they publish a montly chart of "Best graphic card for the money" and they have updated prices.

I highly recommend you to avoid using sites like "hardcoop" because they are biased, and use arguments like "xxxx just feels smoother" even thoug the benchmarks they get show otherwise.

For laptops, use "notebookcheck dot NET".

have a nice day.

yes you are missing the performance part..

even though 2 video cards are having the same video memory they may differ in performance rating..which is the most important thing..

various cards have various bandwidth n etc etc...

here is the link to check n compare the video cards..

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php