Exploring Different Expansion cards

Some card which are necessary for the good  performance and are installed into the mother board's expansion slot are as follow:
1. Multimedia
2. Communications
3. Input/output
4. Thunderbolt

Now, let's discuss each of these card types, their functions, and what some of them look like

Sound Card

It is also know as audio card. This card deals with all applications which play songs, edit videos or audio, presentation software, game equipment and any program which play audio, presentation software, games equipment and any program which play audio. Nowadays, most computer come with integrated Sound card, but for more advanced sound features you can install additional sound card. Sound card came in two form: internal and external.Internal card are installed in the motherboard and external card can be connected via a USB port.
   Video Card 

A video card is also know as a graphics card or display card . It is responsible for generating images to a visual display such as a computer monitor or laptop screen. It converts the data into the pixels addresses, etc. required for display. Sometime, these card have chips to perform the conversion.

The video cards can run on the  PCI interface, but AGP and PCIe slots provide more resources to the adapter. Now, PCIe is the preferred expansion slot for more resources to the adapter. Now,PCIe is the preferred expansion slots for video  card because to the technology of PCIe card is better
Network Card

A network card is also know as a network Interface Card or LAN Adapter. NIC also stands for Network Interface Controller. It is a slot-based expansion card which allows a computer to communicate to another computer in a network such as a Local Area Network or Wide Area Network. These cards are used to handle the buffer storage, and encoding and decoding of data through the network layers. The more advanced features available on the NIC card are dedicated storage and processing capability. They are used for Ethernet, fibre-optic and 802. 11 connections.
Earlier, this card was very popular, but now modern computer have a network interface built into the  motherboard.

Network card are made for Ethernet, fibre-optic, token ring and 802.11 connections. They are classified mostly on the basis of speed. A network card converts the data from the parallel data stream into the serial data stream which creates the frames on the network. It has a connector for the type of expansion bus, like PCI, PCIe, etc., and a connector for connecting the
USB Card

A USB expansion card is used to provide extra connection ports to a computer. UBS stands for Universal Serial Bus. It is the most common type of port found on computers. Peripherals such as printers, keyboards, removable flash drives and mouse are connected to the USB ports. Normally, a modern motherboard commonly has at least two USB slots.

Some of the advantages of USB are hot-plugging and up to 127 USB devices can share a single system resource. USB has width of 1-bit due to its serial nature. They can be plugging into PCI, PCIe, or PCMCIA slots.

Fire-Wire Card

A Fire-Wire card allows a computer to have an IEEE 1394 interface connection which is also know as a Fire-Wire. This term was introduced by Apple in the early 1990s and since 2000. most apple computer support this port. Now, new motherboards have built-in Fire-Wire ports, but this card can added with the help of PCI expansion board.

Thunderbolt Card
The thunderbolt card was developed by Apple and Intel to connect external peripherals the computer. Thunderbolt controllers multiplex data lanes from connected PCIe and DisplayPort devices for transmission then demultiplex them at other end. You can connect upto six Thunderbolt and non-Thunderbolt devices via huds.
Wireless/Cellular Card
A wireless card allows a computer to connect to a radio-based computer network rather than a wired network, and are normally preinstalled. These cards can be added via PCIe or USB. They are used to connect a device to Wi-Fi, using a wireless router or access point. The Wi-Fi receives the data and transmits using radio waves, and then the wireless decodes the signals.
TV Tuner and Video Capture Cards
A television Tuner card is used to allow the computer to receive broadcast signals, such as television signals. These card are inserted into PCI, mini PCI or PCIe, or sometimes as an external USB device. A TV tuner card has an inbuilt processor to ease the pressure on the PC. They can be either analogue or hybrid. Sometimes, they also have a special chip to encode and decode the data being transmitted. They also have flash memory which contains the decoder software to decode the data being transmitted. They also have flash memory which contains the decode software to decode the various video formats. Many TV tuner card are also used as video capture cards.Video capture allows the user to record TV transmissions as they are being broadcasted and viewed.
Riser Card
A riser card helps a motherboard add additional expansional slots to a computer. This card was used in New Low-Profile Extended and some ATX motherboards. This is used to use the vertical space optimally and it is placed on the expansion slots sideways on a special riser card. Normally, the adapter cards are inserted vertically.

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