Graphics Card

Technically getting a graphics card is an optional thing when building a computer, but I would highly recommend it. Some motherboards come with integrated video. This means that they have a video card essentially built into them, and therefore purchasing an extra graphics card is not necessary. But often the extra price paid for a motherboard with integrated video could be spent on a cheap video card that would outperform it. In addition, the majority of higher end motherboards just don’t come with a integrated graphics because they assume you are going to want a graphics card. And if you plan on using vista or doing any kind of serious gaming then a graphics card is almost essential.

Most modern video cards use a PCI Express x16 expansion slot. The majority of motherboards you will be looking at will have at least one of these slots, but you should double check that.

There is such a wide range of graphics cards on the market that it is hard to make a recommendation that isn't outdated in a week. The best place to look for performance comparisons of the latest graphics cards is Tom's Hardware's Graphics chart. It rates the performance of most new graphics cards in a range of benchmarks.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/graphics-cards,1.html

Again selecting a good video card here is going to be a similar process to selecting a processor, but slightly different. Almost all graphics cards are designed and marketed by two major companies; nVidia and ATI. But, unlike processors these graphics cards are not all manufactured by nVidia and ATI. There are many, many different companies that build the exact same model number card. For instance, if you look at the ATI Radeon 4650 graphics card on Newegg, you will notice that you can buy it built by XFX, MSI, HIS, Sparkle and many others. Some of these might come in slightly different trim, but at the core they are all the same processing chips that were designed by ATI or nVidia. Some of them might be assembled with better quality than others, and this is where reading reviews becomes so important. Reviews can also give you a good idea of how the card will perform in some games because frequently reviews will post the results of the cards performance in their review. Try and balance all this information to purchase a good quality chip that will perform how you want.