What is a Capture Card?

Can a graphics card do what a video capture card can?

• I have a NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE graphics card, with what 128 mb of RAM? I've installed a total of about 3GB of RAM on my computer. I want to convert VHS to Digital and burn some DVDs for family. Do I need to be concerned with Video RAM on my computer? Do I need to update my graphics card or just get a video capture card? Either way I need a way to get analog into my computer. Is there a good quality video capture card? How do I know if my motherboard is PCI express ready? I'm not much of a gamer, but the possibility is always there? Lots of questions which can go a million different directions. But lots of new words for me as I look on the internet and I think several may mean the same thing, but I'm sorta a neophyte at all of this. Thanks in advance.

• Answer:

  You do need a video capture device ( External USB, or internal PCI, or Laptop-PCMCIA, all work good. They all come with software, and most all do the "converting" internal to themselves. This reduces the need for high end CPU power to process the data stream and convert it to usable data. Some say they can use USB 1.1, but I would make sure I had USB 2.0 to be able to handle the data input. You really don't need to upgrade video ram, and 3GB is more than enough RAM. Depending on which way you would like to go- New Video w/ integrated capture ( about $150 to 250 ) or new capture card ( $50 to 150 ) should not be too difficult. As far as PCI express, there should be a website for the MOBO mfgr, and they should have that info...