Graphics Cards Explained: How They Power Games, Videos, and More
Even if you’re not deep into computers, have you ever wondered why some computers can make games and videos look amazing, while others struggle? The secret is in the graphics card. This one component matters more than any other factor in making videos flow smoothly and look real instead of choppy and pixelated.
You won’t be an expert in graphics cards at the end of this article. You will, however, understand what role a graphics card plays not only in video playback, but in many other applications as well. They’re critical for gaming, yes, but also for cryptocoin mining and powering artificial intelligence.
What is a Graphics Card?
The best definition of a graphics card is a simple one. It’s a part of your computer that creates images for your screen. It’s located inside desktops and laptops. Phones and tablets have something similar. It’s built into the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) design that holds all the stuff on one chip.
There are two types of graphics cards. One is integrated into the CPU, and the other is called a dedicated card, separate from the CPU. Older systems used to have an onboard graphics card that was soldered onto the motherboard. They were okay, but not anywhere near as powerful as today’s cards.
When people talk about graphics cards, you’ll often hear the term GPU, which stands for Graphics Processing Unit. The GPU is actually the main chip inside the graphics card that does the visual processing. So technically, the GPU is part of the graphics card, kind of like the engine is part of a car. However, in casual conversation, people often use the terms interchangeably.
What Does a Graphics Card Actually Do?
The graphics card does the heavy lifting of turning the 1’s and 0’s of code into images you can see. Every photo, video, or animation on your screen uses tiny dots called pixels. The graphics card’s job is to figure out what color each of those pixels should be—over and over, many times per second.
When you run a program that uses visuals—like a game, video editor, or even a fancy PowerPoint presentation—the GPU takes instructions from the program and does a phenomenal amount of fast math. It calculates where objects should appear on the screen, what they should look like, how light should hit them, and what textures or effects it should apply. It then sends that information to your monitor so the monitor can update the display. Because the GPU is built to handle many similar calculations at the same time, it’s able to handle millions of pixels and creating smooth, real-time visuals.
Key Terms Without the Jargon
Discussions and debates over graphics cards will have the same terms, so it’s helpful to get a handle on them.
- GPU (Graphics Processing Unit): the brain of the graphics card
- VRAM (Video RAM): a dedicated section of the graphics card just used for memory for processing images
- Frame Rate – Frames Per Second (FPS): a measure of how many images – or frames – the graphic system can draw on the screen each second. More frames per second means smoother video motion appearance.
- Resolution: the number of pixels that make up the image on the screen, expressed in width x height (like 1920 x 1080). More pixels on your screen at the same dimensions in inches or centimeters will mean that the picture will look sharper and clearer.
Why Do Some People Need Powerful Graphics Cards?
Gamers find that the smoothness of the graphics contributes not only to a pleasant visual experience but to the gameplay itself. In a 3D or fast-moving game, even a fraction of a second’s pause in motion can mean the difference between life and death of your character.
Some creative work benefits from a good graphics card, as well. Photo editing, and to a greater degree, video editing, animation, and 3D modeling all require the power of a higher-end graphics processor.
Even the simple concept of multiple monitors for basic office tasks requires a better graphics card. A high-resolution monitor that facilitates graphic arts work like digital drawing, photo editing, and video production is another use.
We’re also seeing an increase in the use of graphics cards for artificial intelligence and Machine Learning. (Check out my post on ML here). Because the graphics cards are designed to handle high volumes of mathematical calculations, they’re ideal for AI and ML tasks.
What About Everyday Users?
The more expensive cards provide additional VRAM, more cores (take a look here if you want to know why that matters), more advanced cooling, faster data transfers, and some other hardware-intimate features. They’re designed and built to do things that relatively few people need to do on a daily basis.
If your daily activities don’t include more than web browsing, video streaming, and office work, you probably don’t need a fancy graphics card.
I actually do photo editing and processing, and I’m getting into creating simple videos. My graphics card is an NVidia GeForce. It’s a little better than the one built into the processor, but it’s far from the top of NVidia’s line. Even as I progress into doing more complex and longer videos, I don’t anticipate outgrowing my graphics card anytime soon. It’s the one that came with the computer. When I went looking for this computer, I used a hardware-matching algorithm (and now I can’t find it) that pointed me toward the most likely best system for the way I planned to use it.
Laptops vs. Desktops – What’s the Difference?
Many laptops configured for everyday users have integrated graphics or lower-powered dedicated cards. Gaming and creator laptops, like mine, have stronger, but still compact GPUs. This is important, because even though I want to use a laptop, I want to be able to take it with me. The thickness and weight is a factor, and the size of the GPU is a factor of those things. Even so, the GPU needs its own fan in a laptop. We’re cramming a lot of things in there, and airflow is harder to achieve than it is in a desktop.
Desktops offer more versatility in graphics card options, because they can offer more space. That means that the card itself can be bigger, to start with. That graphics card in the desktop is still going to have a fan, most likely, but air flows better through a desktop because there’s more space between most of the components. The expansion slots available on a desktop’s motherboard offer more upgrade options. It’s pretty hard to upgrade a laptop after it’s built. (Check out this post on motherboards.)
Future-Proofing and Trends
It is difficult to completely future-proof your technology purchases, because there are new products in development constantly. Manufacturers don’t always talk about what they’re working on until something is close to release, and there are several reasons for that. Stock prices are affected, people might delay purchases of current systems if something better is on the horizon, and some things just don’t work out. Even so, there are some things that we do know right now.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
AI and Machine Learning are using GPUs more, and that’s a trend we expect to continue. This is going to be particularly important for the computers and servers that actually do the processing behind the AI and ML actions, not so much for the end-users’ systems that use applications like ChatGPT.
Ray Tracing
One of the hot buzzwords in gaming is ray tracing. Ray tracing simulates how light behaves in the real world. In video games and other animations, it creates more realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections by tracing the paths that light rays would take as they bounce around a scene. Now that it’s possible to make it happen more realistically, gamers and video producers will expect it to be available.
Power Efficiency
More stuff doing more stuff translates to a requirement for more power availability. It’s not enough that the power is available, it’s also important that the devices make efficient use of the power they require. It won’t matter how much a component can do if it requires so much power that it throws a circuit breaker every time it kicks in, plunging your house into darkness.
Compact Design
Along those same lines is the size factor. My laptop is about as heavy as I’d want to carry. If I had to carry it more than I do, I’d probably start looking for things I don’t need in my next one. Laptop users use laptops for portability. Size and weight will always be important, and that means making these powerful components as compact as possible while still offering the functionality we want. Even desktop systems don’t have unlimited space. Packing all that power into the smallest possible footprint is one of the design priorities for component engineers
Your Turn
I confess I’m not a gamer. But even I can see the difference between my first encounter with Duke Nukem and my son’s recent acquisitions. Have you ever played a video game where the quality of the graphics just blew you away? What stood out to you – lighting, detail, realism? Scroll down past the Related Posts section and drop a comment below. If you give me a description that’s really compelling, I might just check it out!
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