2. WHAT ARE GRAPHICS CARDS?
A Graphics Card is a piece of
computer hardware that produces
the image you see on a monitor.
TheGraphics Card is responsible
for rendering an image to your
monitor, it does this by converting
data into a signal your monitor can
understand.
3. WHAT ARE GRAPHICS
CARDS USED FOR?
• Animation
• Gaming – both PC and console
• Design/Drafting
• Special effects creation/editing
• Medical Instruments
• And other purposes where fast rendering
and high resolutions are needed
5. HISTORY
Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) was the
first video card created in 1981 – displays green
text on black screen
Video Graphics Array (VGA) = very popular and
was the standard in almost every PC up until
recently
First 3d video cards were released in 1995 and
they used SVGA; learned to create 3d effects
6. HISTORY
In 1983 Intel made the iSBX 275 Video Graphics
Controller Multimodule Board for industrial
systems based on the Multibus standard.
Released in 1985, the Commodore Amiga was
of first personal computers to come standard
with a GPU
Nvidia was first to produce a chip capable of
programmable shading, GeForce 3(code
named NV20) .
9. What is GPU??
• A GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT or GPU
is a
specialized microprocessor that discharge and
accelerates 3D or 2D graphics.
• Used in embedded systems, mobile
phones, personal computers, workstations
and game consoles.
10. COMPONENTS
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU): perform
calculations for rendering and figure out
what to do with each pixel
Video Memory: storing images and
information about each pixel
Output: Common outputs include Video
Graphics Array (VGA) for CRT monitors,
Digital Visual Interface (DVI) for flat panel
displays, and Video-in-video-out (ViVo) for
television and video cameras
11. COMPONENTS
Heat sink and Fan: used to cool the
GPU, just like the CPU of a computer
having the same cooling instruments
Motherboards: PCI before AGP
Motherboards: Accelerated Graphics
Port (AGP) compatible popular decade
ago; Peripheral Component Interconnect
Express (PCI-E) gaining popularity
BIOS chip that stores settings,
information about each component of the
graphics cards, and can be altered for
over-clocking
12. HOW GRAPHICS CARDS
WORK?
Take data from CPU and figure out what to
do with each pixel to create image
Create wire frame using vectors
Fill remaining pixels with color, lighting,
and texture
The filling will consider viewpoint
For games and video, the graphics cards
has to do the above steps for 30 frames per
second
13. HOW GRAPHICS CARDS
WORK?
In greater detail:
• GPU creates image, stores image with
location and color of each pixel in memory
• Memory also holds completed images until
it’s time to display them (frame buffer)
• Digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is
connected to memory and translates image
into analog signals that is sent through
monitor cable and the image is displayed on
monitor
18. 3D EFFECT: MIP-MAPPING
Pre-calculated images of target
image
Target image, may have several
copies which is ¼ the size of previous
image
Makes rendering faster when the
output is moving toward and further
away from a target image
20. 3D EFFECT: Z-BUFFERING
Each pixel is part of a 2d coordinate (x-y
coordinates)
Depth is z-coordinate
When a new object that is rendered
wants to take a pixel, Z-buffering checks
which pixel is closer to the observer, the
old pixel or the new pixel based on the z-
coordinate
If new pixel is closer, the new pixel is
buffered and replaces old pixel
21. 3D EFFECT: ANTI-
ALIASING
When trying to represent high
resolutions signal at lower
resolutions.
Smoothes out edges to the human eye
by blending of colors.
27. EXTRA FEATURES
ATI and nVidia added enhancements to
their GPUs including:
› Anti-aliasing which makes smoother
edges for 3d objects
› Anisotropic filtering: creating crisper
images
Dual-monitor support which can
increase productivity
TV-tuner
28. DO YOU NEED A GRAPHICS
CARD?
If you only surf the web, watch
streaming videos, chat, or word
processing, the integrated graphics
processor on your motherboard is
enough.
If you play games or work with 3d
graphics, then a graphics card is
recommended.
29. HOW TO JUDGE QUALITY OF GRAPHICS CARD?
Most of the time, you can judge the
quality of a graphics card by the processor
speed and how much memory the card
has.
There are some sites that do benchmark
tests (www.tomshardware.com) for
comparable cards by running graphics
intensive games or environments and
measuring the frame rate (frames per
second)
Higher the frames per second, the
smoother the transitions for frames in
30. MANUFACTURERS
Intel: develop IGPs (integrated graphics
processors)
AMD (acquired ATI) develop GPUs
Nvidia also develop GPUs
Different manufacturers take GPUs and
other components to assemble video cards;
thus creating slight variations of video
cards with same GPUs
Video cards are marketed with GPU
manufacturer’s brand name
Most popular video brands are the Radeon
of ATI and GeForce of Nvidia
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36. IGPS VS GRAPHIC CARDS
About 90% of computers use IGPs
IGPs use the memory in the system
instead of having dedicated video memory
like Graphics Cards
IGPs are way cheaper than Graphics
Cards
Performance always favors Graphics
Cards
Almost impossible to play high end games
on IGPs
37. HOW MUCH VIDEO MEMORY YOU
NEED?
Depends on resolution and bits per pixel
(how many colors possible for pixel)
32bpp = 2^32 = 4,294,967,296 colors
Minimum memory = Resolution x bpp
Example: 1024 x 768 x 32 bits per pixel
25,165,824 bits / (8 bits per byte)
3,145,728 bytes
So need a little bit more than 3 MB of
memory
38. FUTURE
Because of growing processor speeds, there may
be a need to develop a faster way for the CPU to
transfer bits to the GPU (like how AGP was
needed a decade ago, and PCI-E few years ago)
With greater GPU speeds, comes greater
demand for power (a simple PCI-E connection is
not enough to power a high quality graphics
cards these days, most likely needs additional
sockets to be connected for power)
The growth in processor speed and memory will
create higher fps at greater resolutions.
