Video cardVideo cards provide the means for the computer to "talk" to your monitor so it can display what the computer is doing. Older video cards were "2D," or "3D," but today's are all "2D/3D" combos. The 3D is mostly useful for gaming, but in some applications can be useful in 3D modeling, etc. Video cards have their own advanced processing chips that make all kinds of calcuations to make scenes look more realistic. The many video cards out there are based on much smaller number of different chipsets (that are run at different speeds or have slight differences in the chipsets).

Different companies buy these chipsets and make their own versions of the cards based on the chipsets. For the most part, video cards based on the same chipset with the same amount of RAM are about equivalent in performance. However, some brands will use faster memory or other small optimizations to improve the speed. The addition of other extras like "dual head" (support for two monitors) or better cooling fans may also appear by different brands. At any rate, the first decision to make is what chipset you want your video card to use. If you aren't interested in games, then the choice of chipset isn't too difficult - just about any will do for the 2D desktop applications. There's no point in buying a video card over $100 if you don't plan to play games.