Graphics cards are hardware that produce images on a monitor by converting data into signals. They are used for animation, gaming, design, effects creation, and other tasks requiring fast rendering and high resolution. Over time, graphics cards have provided more colors, higher resolution, faster interfaces and more memory. They work by taking data from the CPU and determining what to do with each pixel to create an image. Key components include the GPU, video memory, and output. Graphics cards are better for gaming and 3D graphics than integrated graphics processors.

1. Graphics Cards
Presented by
Poornima . R . shetagar

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

4. HISTORY
Over the years, more colors, higher resolution,
faster bus interfaces, and more memory.

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) .

7. MONOCHROME MONITOR

8. S3 VIRGE

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

14. CPU v/s GPU

15. WIRE IMAGE
Draw 12 lines for cube, then fill in
A curve is created by many short
lines

16. Sample image

17. 3D IMAGE DEVELOPMENT

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

19. 3D EFFECT: MIP-
MAPPING

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.

23. ANTI-ALIASING

24. ANTI-ALIASING

25. ANTI-ALIASING

26. ANTI-ALIASING

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

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.

39. SOURCES
Howstuffworks.com
Wikipedia.org
Encarta.msn.com
Brighthub.com
Pcwize.com
https://mygaming.co.za

40. THANK
YOU