what does a high performance graphics card do?

Question

its important that u make a list of all that things a grahics card does

Answer 1

A High Performance Graphics Card will do the following:

Technical requirements:

Protected Mode
Certain graphics hardware registers/functions, such as cursor control and colormap load, must be segregated into a distinct address space from other functions, such as area clear and line drawing. This allows the operating system to protect *privileged functions*, such as cursor movement or colormap loading, from *user space programs*, which want to have direct access to hardware registers for line drawing and area clear for (obvious) performance reasons. Such functions must be separated by at least 4K bytes, since most CPU's do not allow fine-grained memory protection (e.g. Intel x86, PowerPC, MIPS, Sparc only allow protection for 1K-4K byte pages.)

Hardware Cursor
It is impossible to build a high-performance graphics subsystem if the cursor needs to be drawn using software. This is not much of an issue, since many DAC's today support hardware cursors, and many/most graphics cards provide this function.

Atomic Operations
All drawing (i.e non-protected) operations must be atomic. This allows the operating system to suspend one program that is drawing, and start up another program that is drawing, without hanging the graphics hardware. For example, if it requires three registers to be written to draw a line or clear an are (start-xy, end-xy, and "command"), it must be possible for the software to write the start/end points, and never get around to writing the command, without hanging the hardware. (If the command is never written, then the line is never drawn).

Interruptible Operations
All drawing (i.e. user-level) operations must be interruptible. That is, if a command requires that multiple registers must be written, it must be possible to start writing data for this command, and then break this off and perform another command instead.

Readable Registers
All registers must be readable. This is vital for a multi-tasking operating system. This allows the operating system to stop a graphics process, and save its graphics hardware context. It then allows the OS to restore a possibly different context from a different graphics process, allowing it to run, then stopping it, saving, etc.

Window Clipping Planes
Window clipping planes prevent a program from drawing outside of it's window boundaries. This function isn't absolutely required, but is almost so. A graphics program can achieve much higher performance by not worrying about whether it is drawing outside of it's window boundaries, or whether it is obscured by another window. In addition, clipping planes provide an important security function: they prevent errant or intentionally malicious programs from drawing where they should not. Thus, an out-of-control program will not scribble all over the screen.

Per-Window Double Buffering
This is not strictly a requirement, but frankly, for a high-performance, animated 3D hardware, full-screen double buffering sucks. It is painful to support in the operating system, in the graphics subsystem, and basically looks bad once you have two or more windows animating at the same time.

Per-Window Multiple Colormaps
Again, not strictly a requirement, but if you want things to look nice on the screen, you have got to allow applications to set their own private colormaps, without ruining everything for the other windows on the screen

FIFO's
Another non-requirement, but the fact is that most high-end graphics hardware employs FIFOs to buffer drawing commands between the central CPU and the graphics hardware. These FIFO's are typically anywhere from 64 Bytes to 64 KBytes long. This allows the CPU to write commands to the graphics adapter without having to wait for it to finish, and it allows the graphics hardware to process drawing commands without having to wait for the CPU to provide more commands. As long as the buffer never accumulates more than one-tenth of a second worth of drawing commands, any delays or lags become essentially un-noticeable to the user.

Hardware Contexts
Yet another non-requirement. However, almost all high-end hardware keeps considerable graphics context information on the hardware itself. Just as is the case with FIFO's, this context information must be saved and restored when a context switch occurs. Again, this context is moved either to another memory location on the adapter, or is sent back across the bus to the system for temporary storage in the kernel.
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Consumer Requirements:

* It lets you play the new advanced, popular 3-D games. You'll experience smoother, more fluid animation.
* If you have integrated graphics, a new graphics card does the work previously left to the computer's CPU and main system memory. This frees up the CPU to focus on other game-playing performance aspects that enhance your experience.
* It is equipped with a high-powered video processing unit (VPU) and high-bandwidth memory. (Translation: You can play advanced 3-D games and get realistic video and graphics without sacrificing speed and performance.)
* It improves DVD playback.
* It supports a wide range of monitor configurations, such as more than one monitor at a time from the same graphics card.
* It improves two-dimensional visual quality, especially at high resolutions.

Answer 2

Well , what other people have said here, without the obvious googled answer, though. Just makes it that much more confusing for Novices.

They allow your computer to draw much more complicated graphics, much faster and smoother. Plus they support drawing functions that otherwise would not be supported.

Things to look for are Maximum Resolutions, Color Depth, VPU or GPU Clock Rate, and Memory. You want a card with atleast 128MB VRAM (Video RAM) built-on (256MB -> 512MB) recommended.
If your Computer has PCI-Express get an Accelerator that Uses PCI-Express (PCI-E). If not it probably uses AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), if this is the case, just make sure that your Computer's AGP slot can support the speed of the AGP connector on the New Graphics Card your going to buy.
AGP speeds are 2x,4x,8x,and I think up to 16x. (x = speed)

Be prepared to spend a couple hundred dollars on a good card.

Best brands are:

#1 ATI --> strongly recommended (Radeon X1900 or higher)
#2 3D Labs ---> awesome!, but expensive
#3 nVIDIA ----> Junk, would rather cut off my own legs.

nVIDIA are junk, don't bother with them. Haven't been any good since 3DFX selled out awhile back. Trust me. Next to ATI, nVIDIA don't have a leg to stand on.

Answer 3

A high performance graphics card can do many things. The biggest thing it does is it enhances visual quality of all games, pictures, and movies viewed on you computer. Be warned that if you do not have enough memory it might slow down your computer. You need to have a balance between Graphics, memory, and processor speed to get the optimal performance for graphics.

Answer 4

in the adventure that your working a single card setup i could bypass with the Antec 900. in the adventure that your working a twin card setup(SLI,Crossfire)i could bypass with the Antec 1200. the two circumstances furnish extremely some the superb cooling and area on the marketplace.I at present very own the Antec 1200 and with 5 120mm and a million 200mm followers it retains my 4.2GHz e8600(26c idle/45c load) and my SLI'd BFG 8800GTs(725core/1800shader/2000memory/identity... 35c/load 45c) very staggering and funky.I allso added a Rosewill RFX 120BL 120mm fan to the door for the video enjoying cards wich facilitates by way of fact the 8800GTs vent warm air lower back into the case.