What's inside your computer

• The video card
• The modem
• The sound card
• The DVD-RAM

The video card A video card, (also referred to as a the speed of the AGP interface. PCI graphics accelerator card, display Express, aka PCIe, should not be adapter and numerous other terms), is an confused with the long outdated PCI item of personal computer hardware whose format, which predates even AGP. function is to generate and output The most powerful class of GPUs images to a display. The term is usually typically interface with the motherboard used to refer to a separate, dedicated by means of an expansion slot such as expansion card that is plugged into a PCI Express Graphics (PEG) or slot on the computer's motherboard, as Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) and can opposed to a graphics controller usually be replaced or upgraded with integrated into the motherboard chipset. relative ease, assuming the motherboard Hardware is capable of supporting the upgrade. A video card consists of a printed However, a dedicated GPU is not circuit board on which the components necessarily removable, nor does it are mounted. These include: necessarily interface with the Graphics processing unit (GPU) motherboard in a standard fashion. The The GPU is a microprocessor dedicated to term "dedicated" refers to the fact that manipulating and rendering graphics dedicated graphics cards have RAM that according to the instructions received is dedicated to the card's use, not to from the computer's operating system and the fact that most dedicated GPUs are the software being used. At their removable. Dedicated GPUs for portable simplest level, GPUs include functions computers are most commonly interfaced for manipulating two-dimensional through a non-standard and often graphics, such as blitting. Modern and proprietary slot due to size and weight more advanced GPUs also include constraints. Such ports may still be functions for generating and considered AGP or PCI Express, even if manipulating three-dimensional graphics they are not physically interchangeable elements, rendering objects with with their counterparts. shading, lighting, texture mapping and Integrated Graphics Solutions other visual effects. Integrated graphics solutions, or shared Video memory graphics solutions are graphics Unlike integrated video controllers, processors that utilize a portion of a which usually share memory with the rest computer's system RAM rather than of the computer, most video cards have dedicated graphics memory. Such their own separate onboard memory, solutions are typically far less referred to as video RAM (VRAM). VRAM is expensive to implement in comparison to used to store the display image, as well dedicated graphics solutions, but at a as textures, buffers (the Z-buffer trade-off of being far less capable and necessary for rendering 3D graphics, for are generally considered unfit to play example) and other elements. VRAM modern games as well as run graphically typically runs at higher speeds than intensive programs such as Adobe Flash. desktop RAM. For the most part, current Modern desktop motherboards often graphics cards use GDDR3 or GDDR4 include an integrated graphics solution although DDR, DDR2 or any other and have expansion slots available to technology may be used. add a dedicated graphics card later. Video BIOS As a GPU is extremely memory intensive, The video BIOS or firmware chip is a an integrated solution finds itself chip that contains the basic program competing for the already slow system that governs the video card's operations RAM with the CPU as it has no dedicated and provides the instructions that allow video memory. System RAM may be 2 GB/s the computer and software to interface to 8 GB/s, yet dedicated GPUs enjoy with the card. It contains information between 10 GB/s and 88 GB/s of bandwidth on the memory timing, operating speeds depending on the model. and voltages of the processor and ram Hybrid Solutions and other information. It is possible to This newer class of GPU's competes with re-flash a bios although this is integrated graphics in the low-end PC typically only done by video card and notebook markets. The most common overclockers. implementations of this are ATi's PCI Express HyperMemory and nVidia's TurboCache. PCI Express is the newest slot that most Hybrid graphics cards are somewhat more new cards fit into. It comes in a expensive than integrated graphics, but variety of speeds which vary in size much less expensive than dedicated proportionate to the speed. The older graphics cards. These also share memory AGP slot is still used on legacy with the system memory, but have a motherboards and low end current smaller amount of memory on-board than motherboards, although it will discrete graphics cards do to make up eventually be phased out; most cards are for the high latency of the system RAM. made in both these formats for now. Technologies within PCI Express can make Depending on what speed interface used, this possible. While these solutions are PCI Express video cards may have a sometimes advertised as having as much higher speed interface than AGP, leading as 512MB of RAM, this refers to how much to increased performance on the high end can be shared with the system memory. cards. PCI Express may be up to twice 1 A B C 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105