A video card, also known as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card, is a PC hardware component whose function is to generate and output images to a display. It operates on similar principles as a sound card or other peripheral devices.

The term is usually used to refer to a separate, dedicated expansion card that is plugged into a slot on the computer's motherboard, as opposed to a graphics controller integrated into the motherboard chipset. An integrated graphics controller may be referred to as an "integrated graphics processor" (IGP).

Some video cards offer added functions, such as video capture, TV tuner adapter, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding or even FireWire, mouse, light pen, joystick connectors, or even the ability to connect multiple monitors.

Video cards are not used exclusively in IBM type PCs; they have been used in devices such as Commodore Amiga (connected by the slots Zorro II and Zorro III), Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Atari Mega ST/TT (attached to the MegaBus or VME interface), Spectravideo SVI-328, MSX, and in video game consoles.

If you've been wanting to increased your F@H points per day or just want to upgrade the family PC this is a hard deal to pass up. Newegg has the EVGA GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB video card for sale at $99.99 and has a $50 rebate on it with free 3 day shipping. For $49.99 this graphics card will turn in a reported 4,000-5,000 points per day when running F@H, so if you want to get into folding on the cheap this is the way. The lowest price for this card on PriceGrabber is $106 shipped, so as you can tell this is a great deal. If you want to know how performance does check out this review where I benchmarked the EVGA GeFOrce 9600 GSO against the ATI Radeon HD 4670, GeForce 9600 GT and GeForce 9500 GT.

The NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO GPU offers a powerfully immersive entertainment experience designed for extreme high-definition gaming and video playback. Play the hottest DirectX 10 games with awesome speed and watch the latest HD DVD and Blu-ray movies with brilliant clarity. Featuring next generation GeForce and PureVideo HD technologies, the GeForce 9600 GSO GPU puts amazing graphics performance within your reach. Get the most graphics bang for your buck with a GeForce 9600 GSO GPU. With 96 processor cores supporting resolutions up to 2560x1600, PC gamers everywhere can now enjoy games at extreme HD resolutions without breaking their wallets.