·         What’s a Graphics Card?

– A modern graphics card is a circuit board with memory and a dedicated processor.

– Converts digital information into the pixels to display it on the monitor.

·         Frame Buffers

– The card simply holds a frame of information that is sent to the screen.

– Pixel updates are done by the microprocessor.

– Slow.

·         Graphics accelerators with GPU

– Pixel updates are done by the GPU.

– GPU is optimised for graphics operations.

– Reduces load on the main processor.

Bus Interfaces PCI

·         Peripheral Components Interconnect

Bus Interfaces AGP

·         Accelerated Graphics Port

On board Graphics Accelerator

·         On board graphics accelerators share system memory

·         Wide range of cards

– 3D Acceleration.

– Video Memory.

·         Modern day Graphics cards are more powerful than Pentium processor!

·         Expensive component of your Computer.

·         Choosing a Graphic card

– PCI or AGP.

– Integrated or Add-on card.

– Non-Accelerated or 3D accelerated.

– Cost.