Graphics Cards

A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer monitor. Graphics cards are sometimes called discrete or dedicated graphics cards to emphasize their distinction to integrated graphics. A graphics processing unit that performs the necessary computations is the main component of a graphics card, but the acronym "GPU" is sometimes also used to refer to the graphics card as a whole.

Most graphics cards are not limited to simple display output. The graphics processing unit can be used for additional processing, which reduces the load from the central processing unit. Additionally, computing platforms such as OpenCL and CUDA allow using graphics cards for general-purpose computing. Applications of general-purpose computing on graphics cards include AI training, cryptocurrency mining, and molecular simulation.

Usually, a ''graphics card'' comes in the form of a printed circuit board (expansion board) which are to be inserted into an expansion slot. Others may have dedicated enclosures, and they are connected to the computer via a docking station or a cable. These are known as external GPUs (eGPUs).

Graphics cards are often preferred over integrated graphics for increased performance.

History

Graphics cards historically supported different computer display standards as they evolved. For the IBM PC compatibles, common early standards were MDA, CGA, Hercules, EGA and VGA.

In the late 1980s the like of Radius produced graphics cards for the Apple Macintosh II with discrete 2D QuickDraw capabilities.

3dfx Interactive was one of the first companies to develop a consumer-facing GPU with 3D acceleration (with the Voodoo series) and the first to develop a graphical chipset dedicated to 3D, but without 2D support (which therefore required the presence of a 2D card to work).

NVIDIA RIVA 128 was one of the first consumer-facing GPU integrated 3D processing unit and 2D processing unit on a chip.

Nowadays, the majority of modern graphics cards are built with either AMD-sourced or Nvidia-sourced graphics chips. Most graphics cards offer various functions such as 3D rendering, 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, and the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor). Graphics cards also have sound card capabilities to output sound along with video output for connected TVs or monitors with integrated speakers.

Within the industry, graphics cards are sometimes called ''graphics add-in-boards'', abbreviated as ''AIB''s, with the word "graphics" usually omitted.

Discrete vs integrated graphics

As an alternative to the use of a graphics card, video hardware can be integrated into the motherboard, CPU, or a system-on-chip as integrated graphics. Motherboard-based implementations are sometimes called "on-board video". Some motherboards support using both integrated graphics and the graphics card simultaneously to feed separate displays. The main advantages of integrated graphics are: a low cost, compactness, simplicity, and low energy consumption. Integrated graphics often has less performance than a graphics card because the graphics processing unit inside integrated graphics needs to share system resources with the CPU. On the other hand, a graphics card has a separate random access memory (RAM), cooling system, and dedicated power regulators. A graphics card can offload work and reduce memory-bus-contention from the CPU and system RAM, therefore the overall performance for a computer could improve in addition to increased performance in graphics processing. Such improvements to performance can be seen in video gaming, 3D animation, and video editing.

Both AMD and Intel have introduced CPUs and motherboard chipsets which support the integration of a GPU into the same die as the CPU. AMD advertises CPUs with integrated graphics under the trademark Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), while Intel brands similar technology under " Intel Graphics Technology".

Power demand

As the processing power of graphics cards increased, so did their demand for electrical power. Current high-performance graphics cards tend to consume large amounts of power. For example, the thermal design power (TDP) for the GeForce Titan RTX is 280 watts. When tested with video games, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founder's Edition averaged 300 watts of power consumption. While CPU and power supply manufacturers have recently aimed towa