OT computer question

[default]

How come if you want a video card for a Windows desktop you are
looking at something that eats a lot of power and often requires
substantial additional memory - yet android laptops and TV sticks
perform essentially the same function with little power and memory?

Is the Windows OS that wasteful?

 

[Michael Black]

On Mon, 17 Mar 2014, default wrote:

How come if you want a video card for a Windows desktop you are
looking at something that eats a lot of power and often requires
substantial additional memory - yet android laptops and TV sticks
perform essentially the same function with little power and memory?

Is the Windows OS that wasteful?

IN the old days, a video card was a video card, it provided that function,
it was on a separate card because there were multiple standards, and that
kept on.

Then later, a wave of fancier video cards came along, able to do all kind
of things onboard, so they needed extra memory and a lot more smarts.
INitially, you could choose, those of us not needing any real power just
got a generic VGA card, those doing gaming or fancy graphics spent a lot
of money on the fancier card.

Then later, in order to make computers cheaper, the video card function
was combined on the motherboard. No need for an extra card, but it ran
slower, and used regular RAM (which had its own issues, but if nothing
else took RAM away from the computer). For many people, that was
acceptable, so special video cards slots started disappearing, and the
generic video cards faded, leaving only the expensive and fancy video
cards. When I got this 3GHZ Pentium used a couple of years ago, I was
disappointed that it had no special video slot, so I couldn't use one of
the fancy video cards I'd accumulated when others had discarded them
(though my only real need for a video card was because I had one, so I
might as well use it).

Tablets and notebooks tend to include built in video (just as audio has
become built into the motherboard, when in the old days that too was an
extra card; look at a computer now, and there's hardly any expansion
slots, a reflection of more of it now being built in, and the change to
USB to replace serial and parallel interfaces). If you pay enough, you
get much better function, if not, it's still relatively low level.

What you are really seeing is the loss of the low level video cards, so if
you want or have to buy one, you end up having to overbuy, though for most
people the only reason for a special video card is because you are in need
of really high performance.

Keep in mind that most tv sets are now computers. Both my LCD DTV sets
run Linux.

Michael

 

[Maynard A. Philbrook Jr.]

In article <80uei91370qt9qqr8g12r0n3vc6denh6ue@4ax.com>,
default@defaulter.net says...

How come if you want a video card for a Windows desktop you are
looking at something that eats a lot of power and often requires
substantial additional memory - yet android laptops and TV sticks
perform essentially the same function with little power and memory?

Is the Windows OS that wasteful?

Yup, its those cheap hardware video cards that make the OS do it all,
most likely found in winders!

Jamie

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2014-03-17, default <default@defaulter.net> wrote:

How come if you want a video card for a Windows desktop you are
looking at something that eats a lot of power and often requires
substantial additional memory - yet android laptops and TV sticks
perform essentially the same function with little power and memory?

Is the Windows OS that wasteful?

No, it's the computer shop that would prefer to sell you a $200 card
with lots of ram and a large processor over selling you a $20 one
with a few megabytes of ram and no GPU.

--
Neither the pheasant plucker, nor the pheasant plucker's son.


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---

 

[Wayne Chirnside]

On Mon, 17 Mar 2014 18:40:09 -0400, default wrote:

How come if you want a video card for a Windows desktop you are looking
at something that eats a lot of power and often requires substantial
additional memory - yet android laptops and TV sticks perform
essentially the same function with little power and memory?

Is the Windows OS that wasteful?

YES