Nvidia is a manufacturer of graphics cards. They are one of only 2 main manufacturers, the other being ATI (a division of AMD). Nvidia and ATI design the processors that will run the cards and design how the card will work. There are then numerous other manufactures (XFX, BFG, EVGA, Palit, Sapphire, and the list goes on) that take that design and actually produce the card or make some slight changes then sell the card to the comsumer. The 256mb part refers to the amount of onboard memory (RAM) the card has to store graphical information on. The most popular amount right now is 512mb which is found on most higher end graphica cards.

However, cards are available right now with up to 1.5 gb or memory or even possibly 2gb (2048mb). More RAM on the card, the faster it can work without having to user the slower RAM on the motherboard. However, for most users, more than 512mb is unnecessary as it will never be fully used up. Only those with larger screens (26in and up) will use more memory.

I played GTA San Andreas on a P4 with 256 MB intel graphics card and it worked just fine. I later tried it with high settings on a new PC but didn't find any. The Alphabet Killer Ita on this page.

The best graphics card shouldn't cost more than other cards with comparable performance. Using the 'best' API for each GPU on each game. Oct 29, 2006 Last year I bought a new 128 mb card,the Nvidia GeForce Mx 4000 (if that acctually means anything to you)but it wasn't powerful enough for Black and White.