High-End Graphics Cards Aren’t Just for Gamers
One of our techs installed a really nice graphics card in a computer in our office last week.
A few years ago, everyone would have been wondering if someone was sneaking in a bit of World of Warcraft over lunch. Normal office work just didn’t require that sort of processing power.
Not anymore. Widescreen monitors with high resolutions are graphically intense, and fancy new website technologies like AJAX (that allow you to interact with only part of a webpage without refreshing the whole page—think Facebook, Gmail, Zimbra) can tax a PC graphically as well.
So our sluggish PC got a major graphics upgrade, in the form of a GeForce 9400 GT 1GB DDR2 PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card.
I admit that’s a product name with gamer written all over it.
And be warned that getting the sleek, foreboding black and green box into your office might gain you a couple of curious stares. A backpack or a paper bag could be called for.
But even though the graphics card market still clearly targets the PC gamer, office PCs supporting large monitors or working in web applications can see a big productivity boost by using graphics cards with significant memory and processing power. Plus, the prices have dropped substantially in the last few years, and are easily under $75 for a good card.
So put some gamer gear to work in your office. You may be surprised at the difference.
