can someone explain what a graphics card does for a pc??

Question

im not a technology person but at least im trying to learn so if u no the answer than plz tell me

Answer 1

A graphics card is what processes all the still images that your CPU (central processor/ing unit) spits out at it. if you have a laptop (like me) you will find that you do not have a graphics card (or it is shared with the ram [Random Access Memory]) your images/movie (especially in games that have fast responce times like driving games) will be seen as chunkier and slower. does that help?

Answer 2

As you're looking at your monitor reading this, you're actually looking at pixels, or dots. The entire image you see in your screen is made up of tiny dots called pixel.

Basic working of a computer is that i does calculations. All instructions are calculations. So here, it can be said that your computer needs to calculate the value (color) of each pixel. On the graphic card, it has a microchip called GPU (Graphic Processing Unit). As the name suggest, this microchip do all the calculation of pixel that you see on the screen.

This is the basic working of a graphic card. They render the image you see on your monitor. In simple terms, graphic card "draws" what you see on your screen. They do the workload of drawing the image on your screen. This is why you connect your monitor to your graphic card.

In modern graphic card, all graphic card now comes with 3D capabilities. Its hard to understand all the details but here are the basic, I hope..

when you play a 3D game, the image you see on your screen is a 3D rendering image. Meaning the image changes in 3 dimension, foward-backward, left-right, and up-down.

Rendering 3D image is more complex. First, the computer need to create a 3D world, lets say a room. It's a 3 dimensional room, with 3D shapes representing all objects in that room. All the surface needs a color, for example, the walls of that 3D room is a surface, and it has its own color. Your 3D card will calculate the texture for this surface.

And then as you stand at one point in the room, the graphic card calculates what you can see from that point, it draws the final image to be shown on your screen. (called 2D mapping, meaning to map the virtual 3D world onto a 2D image that can be displayed on your screen)

Of course in reality, a graphic card is doing way more than that when you're playing 3D games. It does alot of other work such as pixel and vertex shading, texture and pixel filtering, and other mumbo jumbo stuff..

Answer 3

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. It operates on similar principles as a sound card or other peripheral devices.

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. An integrated graphics controller may be referred to as an "integrated graphics processor" (IGP).

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, joystick connectors, or even the ability to connect two monitors.

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 in video game consoles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_card

Answer 4

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. It operates on similar principles as a sound card or other peripheral devices.

I hope it helps!

Answer 5

Graphics Card (GPU) will take the place of your on-board graphics which in turn will free up your processor to do other more productive tasks. It will also upgrade the pixel and shader effects that are used to produce a more vivid and realistic view. Most noticable in games, videos, pictures and advanced visual programs.

Answer 6

a graphic card is used to run graphics in ur pc. the higher the version of the card , the better graphics can be run in ur pc.
for example some of the latest games donot run on the graphic card which was in the older pc's. rather they require better graphic card or the games and other applications will not run. (but better the grphic card , higher the price).

Answer 7

Basically, a graphic card is used to enable a computer to show the graphics i.e. pictures, operating systems, etc. Without one, you can not see anything. Hope that's simple things up.... Cheers,

Answer 8

Easiest to explain is that the graphic card provides the video for your PC. Without it, you may not be able to watch some videos....

Answer 9

The graphics card is your Video Card. It is what your monitor is hooked to. It is what you need to display the images of what your seeing on the computer monitor.

Answer 10

See how huge that's as in MB or GB the bigger that's the greater useful the pastime will run, and you should verify the pastime standards. say a pastime demands a million gb photos card you like one that could be a million gb or greater useful