JAKE M. NAPOLESCECELIO LAGUBIS

MARCIAL DAVID TAGUDINCARLO MARTIN PADILLA

VIDEO CARDS

What is a VIDEO CARD?

Video card

What is a VIDEO CARD?

A video card (also called a video adapter, display card, graphics card, graphics board, display adapter or graphics adapter and sometimes preceded by the word discrete or dedicated to emphasize the distinction between this implementation and integrated graphics) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display (such as a computer monitor).

Within the industry, video cards are sometimes called graphics add-in-boards, abbreviated as AIBs,[1] with the word "graphics" usually omitted. Virtually all current video cards are built with either AMD-sourced or Nvidia-sourced graphics chips.[1] Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor).

B The function of a VGA card (video card) is to provide an interface between the hardware and the software. Basically this means that it plugs in to the monitor and shows what the computer is doing.

What is the function of the VIDEO CARD?

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What are the parts of the VIDEO CARD?

A Radeon 7970 with the cooler removed, showing the major components of the card. A modern video card consists of a printed circuit board on which the components are mounted. These include:

Parts

HEAT SINK

A heat sink is mounted on most modern graphics cards. A heat sink spreads out the heat produced by the graphics processing unit evenly throughout the heat sink and unit itself. The heat sink commonly has a fan mounted as well to cool the heat sink and the graphics processing unit. Not all cards have heat sinks, for example, some cards are liquid cooled, and instead have a waterblock; additionally, cards from the 1980s and early 1990s did not produce much heat, and did not require heatsinks.

In electronic systems, a heat sink is a passive heat exchanger that cools a device by dissipating heat into the surrounding medium. In computers, heat sinks are used to cool central processing units or graphics processors. Heat sinks are used with high-power semiconductor devices such as power transistors and optoelectronics such as lasers and light emitting diodes (LEDs), where the heat dissipation ability of the basic device is insufficient to moderate its temperature.

What is the function of the HEAT SINK?

Type Memory clock rate (MHz) Bandwidth (GB/s)

DDR 166 – 950 1.2 – 3.04

DDR2 2000 – 3600 128 – 200

GDDR5 900 – 5700 80 – 230

Video Memory

The memory capacity of most modern video cards ranges from 128 MB to 8 GB.[25][26] Since video memory needs to be accessed by the GPU and the display circuitry, it often uses special high-speed or multi-port memory, such as VRAM, WRAM, SGRAM, etc. Around 2003, the video memory was typically based on DDR technology. During and after that year, manufacturers moved towards DDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4 and GDDR5. The effective memory clock rate in modern cards is generally between 1 GHz and 6.3 GHz.

VIDEO MEMORY

Video memory may be used for storing other data as well as the screen image, such as the Z-buffer, (depth buffering) which manages the depth coordinates in 3D graphics, textures, vertex buffers, and compiled shader programs

The Z-buffer is a technology used in almost all contemporary computers, laptops and mobile phones for performing 3-D (3 dimensional) graphics, for example for computer games. The Z-buffer is implemented as hardware in the silicon ICs (integrated circuits) within these computers. The Z-buffer is also used (implemented as software as opposed to hardware) for producing computer-generated special effects for films.

Furthermore, Z-buffer data obtained from rendering a surface from a light's point-of-view permits the creation of shadows by the "shadow mapping" technique.

What is the use of the VIDEO MEMORY?

The video BIOS or firmware contains a minimal program for initial set up and control of the video card. It may contain information on the memory timing, operating speeds and voltages of the graphics processor, RAM, and other details which can sometimes be changed. The usual reason for doing this is to overclock the video card to allow faster video processing speeds, however, this has the potential to irreversibly damage the card with the possibility of cascaded damage to the motherboard.

the video BIOS provides a set of video-related functions that are used b y programs to access the video hardware. The video BIOS interfaces software to the video chipset in the same way that the system BIOS does for the system chipset. The ROM also contained a basic font set to upload to the video adapter font RAM, if the video card did not contain a font ROM with this font set instead.

Video BIOS

There are three main types of video card commonly in use.

PCI Express, AGP, PCI

VIDEO CARD TYPES

PCI Express is the most current, and fastest, of the video cards. If possible, you will likely want to install a PCI express video card. Figure 5.1 shows a PCI Express video card

PCI Express

 http://www.heatonresearch.com/articles/25/page2.html

Before PCI express the most common type of video card was the AGP card. AGP cards still give great performance. If you have only one video card in your system you will want to make sure it is either AGP or PCI Express. Figure 5.2 shows an AGP video card.

AGP

http://www.heatonresearch.com/articles/25/page2.html

An entry level video card such as the EVGA GeForce 8400 GS sells for as little as US$30. Many of the best-selling video cards are priced between US$100 and US$500. A high-end video card can cost US$500 or more as of late 2013.[3] An expensive video card marketed to enthusiasts (primarily gamers), the EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti, is priced around US$700 in late 2013.[4] An even more expensive card, the ASUS GeForce GTX TITAN with 6 GB of 384-bit GDDR5 RAM is priced around US$1000 in late 2013.[5] Although the price for the ASUS GeForce GTX TITAN may seem extreme, a single card can replace multi-card setups, reducing energy consumption and therefore system cooling requirements.

Price ranges and market segments for video cards

Beyond the enthusiast segment is the market for professional video cards for workstations used in the special effects industry, and in fields such as design, analysis and scientific research. Nvidia is a major player in the professional segment. In November, 2013, AMD introduced a so-called "Supercomputing" graphics card "designed for data visualization in finance, oil exploration, aeronautics and automotive, design and engineering, geophysics, life sciences, medicine and defense."[6]

Price ranges and market segments for video cards

As the processing power of video cards has increased, so has their demand for electrical power. Current high-performance video cards tend to consume a great deal of power. For example, the thermal design power (TDP) for the GeForce GTX TITAN is 250 Watts.[7] While CPU and power supply makers have recently moved toward higher efficiency, power demands of GPUs have continued to rise, so the video card may be the biggest electricity user in a computer.[8][9] Although power supplies are increasing their power too, the bottleneck is due to the PCI-Express connection, which is limited to supplying 75 Watts.[10]

What about the POWER DEMAND?

Modern video cards with a power consumption over 75 Watts usually include a combination of six-pin (75W) or eight-pin (150W) sockets that connect directly to the power supply. While manufacturers of high-end video cards may recommend a minimum power supply of 500 Watts in a computer, a power supply of at least 750 Watts is typical in a gaming computer with a single high end video card. Providing adequate cooling becomes a challenge in such computers. Computers with multiple video cards may need power supplies in the 1000W-1500W range. Heat extraction becomes a major design consideration for computers with two or more high end video cards.

POWER DEMAND

Video cards for desktop computers come in 2 size profiles, to allow adding a graphics card to even small form factor PCs.

These sizes are regular and low-profile video cards.[11][12] the profiles are based on width only, with low-profile card taking up less than the full width of a PCIe slot. The length and thickness vary greatly, high-end cards usually occupy 2 or 3 expansion slots, and vary greatly in length, with dual-gpu cards -such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 690- generally over 10" in length.[13]

What are the sizes of the Video Cards?

Some graphics cards can be linked together to allow scaling of the graphics processing across multiple cards. This is done using either the PCIe bus on the motherboard, or, more commonly, a data bridge.

Generally, the cards must be of the same model to be linked, and most low power cards are not able to be linked in this way.[14] AMD and Nvidia both have proprietary methods of scaling, CrossfireX for AMD, and SLI for Nvidia.

Cards from different chipset manufacturers, architectures, and/or memory sizes cannot be used together for multi card scaling. Currently, scaling on consumer grade cards can be done using up to four cards.[15][16][17]

What is a Multi-card scaling?

The device driver usually supports one or multiple Application programming interfaces (APIs) like OpenGL, Direct3D, or Mantle, and the architecture of a GPU-family. A device driver has to be specifically written for an operating system

OpenGL, Direct3D, or Mantle

Device drivers

OpenGL (Open Graphics Library)[2] is a cross-language, multi-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a Graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.

OpenGL was developed by Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) from 1991 and released in January 1992[3] and is widely used in CAD, virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, flight simulation, and video games. OpenGL is managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group.

Device drivers supporting: (API)-OpenGL

Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface (API). Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems (Windows 95 and above), and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems. Direct3D is used to render three dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D also allows applications to run fullscreen instead of embedded in a window, though they can still run in a window if programmed for that feature.

Direct3D uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the graphics card, allowing for hardware acceleration of the entire 3D rendering pipeline or even only partial acceleration. Direct3D exposes the advanced graphics capabilities of 3D graphics hardware, including z-buffering, spatial anti-aliasing, alpha blending, mipmapping, atmospheric effects, and perspective-correct texture mapping. Integration with other DirectX technologies enables Direct3D to deliver such features as video mapping, hardware 3D rendering in 2D overlay planes, and even sprites, providing the use of 2D and 3D graphics in interactive media ties.

Device drivers supporting: (API)-direct 3D

Device drivers supporting: (API)- mantle

Mantle is a low-level API specification developed by AMD as an alternative to Direct3D and OpenGL, primarily for use on the PC platform.[2] Currently the only implementation is for graphics processing units with AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture,[3] although there is speculation other GPU vendors such as NVidia and Intel might be able to implement it in future.[2] Mantle was created to allow games and applications to utilize the GPU more efficiently, and have much faster draw calls, and makes game development much easier by nearly eliminating hardware abstraction.

Contents

Video card shipments totaled 14.5 million units in the third quarter of 2013, a 17% fall from Q3 2012 levels.[18] The traditional PC market is shrinking as tablet computers and smartphones gain share. Years ago, the move to integrated graphics on the motherboard greatly reduced the market for low end video cards.

Now, AMD and Intel's accelerated processing units, which combine graphics processing with CPU functions on the CPU die itself, are putting further pressure on video card sales.[19] AMD introduced a line of combined processors which it calls the AMD A-Series APU Processors (A4, A6, A8, A10) while Intel, rather than marketing an exclusive line of APUs, introduced its "4th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors", some of which are APUs

Size of market and impact of accelerated processing units on video card sales

Those processors are described as offering "Superb visuals and graphics performance–without the cost of a separate graphics card."[20] They are branded as having Intel HD Graphics or Intel Iris Pro Graphics. As an example, the Intel Core i7 4750HQ with Iris Pro Graphics 5200, an accelerated processing unit for notebook computers, allows users with mid-range graphics requirements to use a notebook computer without a video card. In a September, 2013 review of the Intel Core i7 4750HQ accelerated processing unit (which is closely related to the Intel processor with HD Graphics 5000 used in the MacBook Air,) the website hardware.info stated

Size of market and impact of accelerated processing units on video card sales

With its latest generation of integrated graphics, Intel set out to rival the performance of the mid-range mobile Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics card. And the tests leave no doubt about it, both 3DMark and the gaming benchmarks confirm that the [Intel] Iris Pro Graphics 5200 is on the same level of or slightly below that of the GT 650M."[2] (The GeForce GT 650M is not sold through retail channels, but an EVGA desktop GTX 650 was selling for around $120 in late 2013.[21]) Although the review notes that Intel's accelerated processing unit is not yet cost competitive, the technology is approaching competitiveness, at least with mid-range mobile dedicated video.

Size of market and impact of accelerated processing units on video card sales

(A video benchmarking website that tabulates user-submitted benchmarks shows Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200, based on a very small sample of 8 submissions, scoring a G3D Mark of 912,[22] versus 1296 for the Nvidia GeForce GT 650M,[23] with higher scores being better. If the benchmark is linear, that puts the Iris Pro Graphics 5200's performance at about 70% of the GeForce GT 650M Intel was targeting. AMD's A10-5750M mobile APU with Radeon HD 8650G graphics scores 858 on this graphics benchmark.[24]) With anticipated price reductions, it is predicted that APUs will eventually replace low to mid-range dedicated video implementations. That will leave only the high-end enthusiast and professional market segments for video card vendors.

Size of market and impact of accelerated processing units on video card sales

computer games are not difficult for most modern video cards to handle, but that hasn’t stopped the performance war between AMD and NVIDIA. It’s only raised the bar. 1080p is now a mundane resolution. To really push the hardware you need a 2560×1440 display – or more.

The red and green teams are also firing at each other with new features designed to give each an edge. I’m not talking about CUDA, Supersampling or multi-GPU configurations. No, that’s old news. I’m talking about GPU Boost, Eyefinity, TXAA and more. You should know about these features before buying your next video card.

New Features of VIDEO CARD