Discovering What Video Circuitry Is inside Your PC

Microsoft refers to video circuits as video display adapters, but the rest of the world usually calls them video cards. Video cards can plug into either of three different types of slots, so your first job is to find out which video slot lives inside your PC.

You may need to open your PC’s case, a simple chore explained on the Cheat Sheet in the front of this book. After you’re inside your PC’s case, look at Figure 7-1: It shows the motherboard, the flat bed of circuitry that lives inside your PC. Everything inside your PC attaches to the motherboard, including the video card. (See Color Plates 8 and 9 in the color insert pages in this book for labeled photos of motherboards.)

The rest of this section explains the types of video you find in PCs today and how to figure out exactly which one lives inside your PC.

 

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