What is the difference between a graphics card and a graphics controller?

Question

Or are they just two names for the same thing?

Answer 1

Graphics controller
http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/g/grapcont.htm
A chip, also known as a graphics coprocessor, similar to a microprocessor ordinarily found on graphics accelerator cards. It processes the graphics to create dots and lines on-screen.

Graphics Card (AKA Video Card)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_card

A video card, (also referred to as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, graphics card, and numerous other terms), is an item of personal computer hardware whose function is to generate and output images to a display.

The term is usually used to refer to a separate, dedicated expansion card that is plugged into a slot on the computer's motherboard, as opposed to a graphics controller integrated into the motherboard chipset.

Some video cards offer added functionalities, such as video capture, TV tuner adapter, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding or even FireWire, mouse, light pen or joystick connectors.

Video cards are not used exclusively in IBM type PCs; they have been used in devices such as Commodore Amiga (connected by the slots Zorro II and Zorro III), Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Atari Mega ST/TT (attached to the MegaBus or VME interface), Spectravideo SVI-328, MSX and, obviously, in video game consoles.

Answer 2

a graphics card is dedicated and thats the only thing it does, while a graphics contoleer is intergrated graphics, which is worse and takes memory out of the computer for graphic memory.

Answer 3

Technobabble.