Graphics cards allow you to play sophisticated 3D games on your laptop.
Computer graphics technology has come a long way. Small laptops are now able to run complex graphics and animations without having to sacrifice battery life. The cards are referred to as hybrid graphics cards or adapters. One popular example of such an adapter is the ATI Radeon 3100. It comes installed on many computers as part of AMD's 780v chipset.
PCI Express 2nd Generation
The ATI Radeon 3100 uses PCI Express second generation technology. As of 2010, this is the fastest interface for a graphics card available on a laptop. It is also considered to be one of the most energy efficient.
AMD Cool 'n' Quiet
The adapter also comes equipped with "AMD Cool 'n' Quiet" 2.0. This technology is basically AMD's innovation that allows you to have the graphic processing power you have become accustomed to on your home desktop on your laptop. There is little publicly available regarding the technical specifications of the technology, as it is proprietary and closed source. However, the technology has had a number of favorable reviews.
DirectX 10
Full DirectX 10 support meets the requirements of Microsoft's "Premium certification." DirectX is the de facto standard for gaming on Windows, and supporting it is one of the most important things any graphics adapter can do. If you have any interest in gaming, then DirectX support is a must have feature.
Hybrid Graphics
Another important feature is called hybrid graphics. That means that the ATI 3100 does not work like a full desktop graphics card in the way that it process graphical information. Basically, the adapter itself has a specific amount of memory dedicated for playing videos and rendering games and can borrow memory from the RAM, if more memory is needed. This allows the adapter to be both powerful and energy efficient.
Tags: Radeon 3100, Cool Quiet, DirectX support, energy efficient, graphics card