Newbie question about graphics cards.

[Martin9744]

Hey, I got a few questions about graphics cards.

1. Why are some cards called 560, 760, 780, basically numbers, and some cards are called TITAN, and much more expensive.

2. What are the difference between for example 560 and 560Ti?

3. What are the differences between these two? I understand that there are different brands, but what does LE, 3GB, PhysX and CUDA mean?

ASUS GeForce GTX 780Ti 3GB PhysX CUDA
MSI GeForce GTX 780Ti Gaming LE 3GB

4. If I'm getting a new graphics card, is it any other parts in my PC that have to fit with it? Like any specific motherboard or something. I got ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3, Socket-1155.

5. Could anyone explain easily what Socket is too please?

Sorry if these questions can be found other places.

Thanks in advance 😀

 

[NightAntilli]

1) The numbers are just the names for the graphics card. Generally the first number means the generation, and the last two numbers refer to 'tiers', where in general, higher is better. TITAN is a model of graphics cards designed for more than just gaming. It has a bunch of features that games will never use.

2) The Ti extensions generally means a slightly faster version. In the past it has been used to mean different things.

3) LE generally means a slower version than the standard one. 3GB is the size of the memory on the card.
PhysX is a feature that all modern nVidia cards support which gives additional graphical stuff with physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trq6B4anzjM
CUDA is a feature by nVidia to make use of the graphics in things other than graphics rendering. For details; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

4) Modern graphics cards go into a PCI-e x16 slot. Your motherboard has two of them, so you should be fine.

5) A socket is what a processor goes into. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_socket

 

[Martin9744]

1) The numbers are just the names for the graphics card. Generally the first number means the generation, and the last two numbers refer to 'tiers', where in general, higher is better. TITAN is a model of graphics cards designed for more than just gaming. It has a bunch of features that games will never use.

2) The Ti extensions generally means a slightly faster version. In the past it has been used to mean different things.

3) LE generally means a slower version than the standard one. 3GB is the size of the memory on the card.
PhysX is a feature that all modern nVidia cards support which gives additional graphical stuff with physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trq6B4anzjM
CUDA is a feature by nVidia to make use of the graphics in things other than graphics rendering. For details; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

4) Modern graphics cards go into a PCI-e x16 slot. Your motherboard has two of them, so you should be fine.

5) A socket is what a processor goes into. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_socket

Since I got Socket-1155 on my motherboard, what other parts in my pc does this socket matter for? Does for example the monitor or graphics card have to have the same socket to work?

 

[NightAntilli]

The socket itself has no influence on anything other than which CPU you can use. But certain sockets are combined with certain chipsets. And the chipsets determine which graphics cards you can use, which USB version is supported and so on.

Your socket: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155
Chipsets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipset

Your motherboard has the Intel Z68 chipset. You can see what it supports in the following table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_chipsets#LGA_1155