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- Post Publish: 2023-01-22
- Categories: Knowledge
- Updated:
- Posts by Mina Xiao
Demystifying what is a Graphics Card: Everything You Need to Know
Mina Xiao
Demystifying what is a Graphics Card: Everything You Need to Know - Table of contents:
The graphics card (Video Card, Display Card, Graphics Card, and Video Adapter) is one of the components of the personal computer foundation.
The display information required by the computer system is converted to the driver, and the display is provided with a display of scanning or interval to control the display. Correctly show that it is an important component of the connected display and personal computer motherboard. It is one of the important pieces of equipment of the “human-machine”. Its built-in parallel computing power is also used for deep learning and other operations.
What is a graphics card?
A graphics card, also known as a video card, is an important part of a computer and is responsible for outputting graphics. For those who like to play games and engage in professional graphics design, graphics cards are very important. The display chips of mainstream graphics cards are mainly manufactured by two major manufacturers, NVIDIA (NVIDIA) and AMD (Advanced Semiconductor). Usually, graphics cards using NVIDIA display chips are called N cards, while graphics cards using AMD display chips are called A cards.
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Working principle
The graphics card is inserted into the expansion slot on the motherboard (usually a PCI-E slot, before that there were AGP, PCI, ISA, and other slots).
It is mainly responsible for converting the display signal sent by the host to the display into a general electrical signal so that the display can understand what the personal computer is doing.
The graphics card is mainly composed of a graphics card motherboard, a display chip, a display memory, a heat sink (heat sink, fan), and other parts. The main chip of the graphics card is called the “display chip” (Video chipset, also called GPU or VPU, graphics processor or visual processor), which is the main processing unit of the graphics card.
There is also a memory similar to computer memory on the graphics card, called “display memory”, or video memory for short.
The graphics card is usually composed of a bus interface, PCB board, display chip, video memory, RAMDAC, VGA BIOS, VGA function pin, D-sub socket, and other peripheral components. Most graphics cards also have VGA, DVI LCD displays interface or HDMI interface and S-Video terminal and Display Port interface.
Graphics card classification
1. Integrated Graphics card
CPUs equipped with core graphics cards are usually not expensive, and low-end core graphics cards are not suitable for large-scale games. The integrated graphics card is a component that integrates the display chip, video memory, and related circuits on the motherboard and integrates it; the display chip of the integrated graphics card is separate, but most of them are integrated into the north bridge chip of the motherboard; some motherboards integrate the graphics card also has a separate video memory installed on the motherboard, but its capacity is small.
The display effect and processing performance of the integrated graphics card are relatively weak, and the hardware upgrade of the graphics card cannot be performed, but the potential of the display chip can be tapped by adjusting the frequency through CMOS or flashing a new BIOS file to realize software upgrades.
The advantages of integrated graphics cards are low power consumption and low heat generation. The performance of some integrated graphics cards is already comparable to that of entry-level discrete graphics cards. Therefore, pursuing low power consumption and low heat, the industrial lcd displays adopts integrated graphics card to achieve satisfactory performance.
The disadvantage of the integrated graphics card is that its performance is relatively low, it is fixed on the motherboard or CPU, and cannot be replaced by itself. If it must be replaced, the motherboard can only be replaced.
2. Discrete graphics card
An Independent graphics card means that the display chip, video memory, and related circuits are separately made on a circuit board, and exist as an independent board card. It needs to occupy the expansion slot (ISA, PCI, AGP, or PCI- E). The advantage of a discrete graphics card is that it is installed with video memory separately, generally does not occupy system memory, and is much more advanced than an integrated graphics card in technology, but its performance is definitely not worse than the integrated graphics card, and it is easy to upgrade the hardware of graphics card.
The disadvantage of a discrete graphics card is that the power consumption of the system has increased, and the heat generated is also relatively large, which requires additional funds to purchase the graphics card, and at the same time (especially for notebook computers) takes up more space. Due to the different performances of graphics cards, the requirements for graphics cards are also different. Independent graphics cards are actually divided into two categories, one is entertainment graphics cards specially designed for games, and the other is professional graphics cards for drawing and 3D rendering.
3. Core Graphics
The core graphics card is the new generation graphics processing core of Intel products. Different from the previous graphics card design, Intel integrates the graphics core and processing core on the same substrate by virtue of its advanced technology in the processor manufacturing process and new architecture design. a complete processor.
The design integration of the intelligent processor architecture greatly reduces the data turnaround time between the processing core, graphics core, memory, and memory controller, effectively improves the processing performance and greatly reduces the overall power consumption of the chipset, and helps to reduce the core components. The size provides more choices for the design of notebooks, all-in-one computers, and other products.
Compared with the former two, the core graphics card integrates the graphics core into the processor, which further enhances the efficiency of graphics processing, and integrates the “processor + south bridge + north bridge (graphics core + memory control + display output)” in the integrated graphics card. )” three-chip solution is simplified into a dual-chip mode of “processor (processing core + graphics core + memory control) + motherboard chip (display output)”, which effectively reduces the overall power consumption of core components and is more conducive to extending the battery life of the notebook time.
Low power consumption is the main advantage of the core graphics card. Due to the new streamlined architecture and integrated design, the core graphics card has better control over the overall energy consumption.
The efficient processing performance greatly shortens the computing time and further reduces the performance of the system platform. consumption. High performance is also its main advantage: the HD graphics card has many advantageous technologies, which can bring sufficient graphics processing power, and its performance improvement compared to the previous generation is very obvious.
Graphics card structure
The structure of a general graphics card is as follows:
* Capacitors: Capacitors are very important components in graphics cards, because the quality of display quality depends mainly on the quality of capacitors, and the quality of capacitors directly affects the quality of graphics card circuits.
* Video memory: Video memory is responsible for storing various data that the display chip needs to process. Its capacity and performance directly affect the display effect of the computer. All new graphics cards use DDR6/DDR5 video memory, and the mainstream video memory capacity is generally 2GB ~ 4GB.
* GPU and fan: GPU is the graphics card chip, which is responsible for most of the computing work of the graphics card, which is equivalent to the role of the CPU in the computer. The role of the GPU fan is to cool the GPU.
* Graphics card interface: usually called a golden finger, it can be divided into three types: PCI, AGP, and PCI Express. PCI and AGP graphics card interfaces are basically eliminated, and mainstream graphics cards on the market use PCI Express graphics cards.
* Peripheral interface: The graphics card peripheral interface is responsible for the output task of the graphics card. The new graphics card includes a traditional VGA analog interface and one or more digital interfaces (DVI, HDMI, and DP).
* Bridge interface: mid-to-high-end graphics cards can support multiple pieces of work at the same time, and the bridge interface is connected between them through a bridge.
A USB 2.0 can be used in a USB 3.0 port. For example, if you connect a USB 2.0 device to a USB 3.0 port, the device will work as normal. But the transfer rate will fall back to the speed of USB 2.0, so you won’t get a high transfer speed.
You can identify a USB 3.0 port by checking its physical port. A USB 3.0 port is distinguishable by its blue-colored insert and it is usually equipped with a 3.0 logo. You can also open Windows Device Manager. Expand Universal Serial Bus Controllers and check if there is an item that has USB 3.0 in the title. If YES, it means you have a USB 3.0 port on the PC.