What does a powerful video card do for you? (other than assist high end video games)?

I know that a strong video card is the cornerstone of any gaming computer.



What I don't know is why an average person would need a powerful video card. Is there any reason at all why someone who's not planning on gaming should even get a 9600GT?



I'm talking about any situation you can think of.



Rendering doesn't make the cut as a viable answer - that depends more on processor and RAM.|||if not for gaming, then Quality of media graphics or design software etc.

9600gt is a great card for value for money, and I should imagine, in 2 or 3 or 4 years time, it will still be going quite strong, and hopefully meet up the requirements for graphics then.|||What video cards do is help reduce the CPU load. It's actually basically a secondary cpu. When things from opening windows to loading up simple programs, video cards can perform most of the calculations which makes CPU usage lower, which in return makes your computer more responsive when performing multiple activities.



EX. Also if you watch high definition videos, your video card will take all the load, so in the end, you wont notice any slowdowns while watching a movie and doing other tasks.|||if you are going to view a hd video i mean like blu ray disks they do require a small amout of video ram seperate from the ram. and video edtiting would also require video cards. other than those reasons...a typical person would not need a high end or even a seperate graphics card(dedicated). thats why most computer dont have them.|||GPUs can be used to accelerate programs. The 9600GT has CUDA, which can accelerate Photoshop CS4 and other programs. It makes it less of a hassle to work with 50GB files.



GPUs can also be used to encode videos. They're pretty fast at it.



The other people around me have the other tasks covered.|||There isn't really a reason why a person would need such power in a video card. Most applications don't need the high end specs of a gaming machine. Its pretty much the gamers that fuel these chip makers to faster and more powerful hardware.