What is a graphics card? Here’s what you need to know

• A graphics card is an expansion card for your PC that is responsible for rendering images for the monitor.
• State-of-the-art GPUs are used for gaming, lightning tracking, graphics production and even for cryptocurrency mining.
• Here is a brief overview of everything you need to know about graphics cards.
• Visit the Business Insider technical reference library for more stories.

At the birth of the computer age, the IBM PC became the standard computer largely due to its modular architecture with interchangeable components.

Like the original IBM, every PC motherboard now has slots into which any third-party manufacturer can insert the necessary components to make the PC work. Among these components: the graphics card, which is responsible for displaying all the images you see on the screen.

Nvidia

What to know about graphics cards

A video card looks like a smaller version of the computer’s motherboard – it’s a printed circuit board that has a processor, RAM and other components. Sometimes a graphics card is commonly called a graphics processing unit or GPU, but in reality the GPU is just one component (although it is the main and defining component) of the graphics card.

In fact, GPUs come in two main forms:

• An integrated GPU it is built into the motherboard and cannot be upgraded or replaced. You will find this on cheap laptops and desktops. These graphics typically perform modestly and do not work well for tasks such as games or professional graphics production.
• A discrete GPU is mounted on a graphics card that fits into a computer’s expansion slot on the motherboard. This type of video card is replaceable, so it can be upgraded as new video cards are developed and helps prevent a PC from becoming obsolete.

Modern graphics cards are extremely sophisticated devices that, in a way, behave like independent computers. They perform an enormous amount of calculations and are usually the most sophisticated components of a computer – particularly high-end graphics cards optimized for games and advanced graphics processing.

They are not only responsible for designing ordinary 2D graphics, such as windows and documents, but the best modern graphics cards can generate realistic, high-resolution 3D graphics in real time without the need to pre-render the content. They are essential for graphic production, such as photography and video production, because they are able to manipulate and process a huge amount of pixels in real time.

Increasingly, graphics cards are also able to perform a technique known as ray tracing. Ray tracking is a form of 3D graphics in which scenes are rendered by tracing the path of each beam of light in a scene and accurately modeling its effect on the materials and textures of the image. Radius-plotted graphics are incredibly realistic and previously could only be rendered in advance with great processing power. As graphics cards with ray tracing features continue to drop in price, video games will increasingly rely on ray tracing graphics to deliver cinema-quality visuals rendered in real time.

Nvidia

Types of graphics cards

Virtually all graphics cards are developed by two rival brands: Nvidia and AMD. No matter what type of graphics card you buy or find inside your PC, it is almost certain to be sold directly by one of these companies or by a third party that licensed the technology.

This makes it easier to buy a graphics card because, although there are many companies that sell graphics cards, you can always compare them directly, as they are all using the same underlying architecture. In other words, an Nvidia GeForce 2070 GPU will behave more or less the same, no matter if you buy it from Asus, MSI, Gigabyte or Nvidia.

AMD is a close competitor to Nvidia and the two companies sometimes excel at superior performance. But as a general rule, the best AMD cards offer performance similar to the best Nvidia cards.

Graphics Card Applications

The sophistication and processing power of modern GPUs mean that graphics cards are often the most complex and high-performance components in a computer, rivaling or surpassing the computer’s CPU (central processing unit).

State-of-the-art video cards do all the traditional tasks for which they have always been responsible, including rendering the common graphics you use daily. They also render advanced 3D graphics in real time for computer games.

Graphics professionals also have high-tech graphics cards. Nowadays, photo, video and graphics production applications depend on the graphics card, not the computer’s CPU, to perform advanced image processing, including computer photography, which uses artificial intelligence and computer processing to obtain results that before they could only be done “on the lens” when the photos or videos were taken.

GPUs on graphics cards are also sometimes used for their raw processing power to perform non-graphics jobs. Cryptocurrency miners, for example, rely on computers with the latest graphics cards to perform the sophisticated coin mining process.