How much performance can US$100 buy? Not long ago, the answer would have been that unless you found something in the bargain bin or the reject section or maybe in the estate of somebody who moved on to greener pastures, even satisfying just the most marginal demands were slim pickings at best. Things are changing rapidly, though, and all of a sudden, just looking at the $100.- offerings can burn a literal hole in the pocket. With CPU, memory and storage prices plummeting, the one category still a bit behind on the price erosion curve was an affordable graphics card solution that would do justice to the latest games. After all, if the eye candy is programmed into the games and photorealism, not to mention anatomically correct displays of body motions take over in the animations, it would be a shame to reduce game play to stick figure-like characters.

OpenGL and More Gaming

At one time, OpenGL (Open Graphics Library ) used to be the predominant API for 2D and 3D applications. OpenGL is a standard cross platform API for computer graphics originally developed by Silicon Graphics in 1992, featuring over 250 function calls. While OpenGL has been pushed somewhat into the back by DirectX powering most games in the Microsoft Windows environment, it remains a powerful factor in CAD and scientific computing. OpenGL is currently managed by a non-profit technology consortium known as the Khronos Group. OpenGL allows each vendor to add functions through extensions of the standard that are designated by specific identifiers (for example “NV” for nVidia).