Graphic card
A graphics card or video card is a component of a computer which is designed to convert a logical representation of an image stored in memory to a signal that can be used as input for a display medium, most often a monitor utilising a variety of display standards. Typically, it also provides functionality to manipulate the logical image in memory.
As was in the past, many graphics cards are standalone devices, attached to a motherboard via the ISA, PCI, VESA, or AGP buses, with recently-introduced PCI-Express expected to be prominent in the future.
Increasingly, however, the graphics card is no longer a "card" in the strictest sense, but is an integrated section of the motherboard dedicated to the same purpose. But since integrated-graphics-displays usually have inferior performance compared with standalone graphics cards (due to using cheaper chipsets and sharing system memory rather than using dedicated memory), those who require high performance still prefer non-integrated solutions.
These more powerful graphics cards, usually geared toward displaying 3D graphics for games, are still card-based. Their processing engines are sometimes called GPUs (graphics processing units). The longterm goal of graphics cards manufacturers (and game developers) appears to be realtime photorealistic rendering. New products and technologies are often touted to provide "Hollywood quality" - 3dfx used claims of movie-quality effects to promote their Voodoo 5 cards with T-Buffer technology, allowing motion blur, depth of field and full screen anti-aliasing effects. nVidia talked about "The dawn of cinematic computing" when introducing its GeForce FX chip with the Dawn technology demo.
Conversely, sometimes 3D-graphics capibilities are not relevant to the choice of high-performance graphics card; 2D graphics and fine visual-quality fill specialised niches in areas such as medical imaging.
Analog computer monitors are usually connected to the graphics card via a VGA connector. Digital computer monitors are connected to the graphics card via a DVI connector.
Manufacturers
See Also
