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The Video Card is an important component of a computer, without it you would have no way to connect your computers monitor to the computer system itself. Video card arent just to hook up your monitor, there are many different types of video cards availabale, the most common function for video cards is to provide advanced graphics for video games on computers.
Video cards connect to the motherboard of the computer by what is called an expansion slot, however, many motherboards have a video chip built into it, meaning the video card is built in. There are many different kinds of expansion slots, the most common for video cards are AGP, and PCI (PCI EXPRESS may soon be popular too.)The AGP is usually faster than a (standard) PCI video card, in general, which provides faster and smoother graphics.
The connection on the end of the video card is called the vga connection, which has many small holes for pins to go into, it is where the montior connects to the card. Many newer cards have a connection called a DVI (Digital Video Interface)connection which is common on flat panel screens.Sometimes video cards will have other connections on it for example a video input or output to a tv set.
Many newer video cards are built almost like a mini computer, having its own processing unit and ram, built onto the video card itself. You will find high end video cards with 256 MB of ram, just for the video.