Graphics Card vs Video Card
If you are wondering which to get between the graphics card vs. video card, you have come to the right place. There are affordable options that you can take into consideration.
Graphics and video are considered as part of the most important elements in the field of multimedia. This works together with other features, including sound, text, animations, and images. When all of these elements are combined with working together inside a computer, the equipment becomes a multimedia computer.
Their Function and Use
Multimedia is a platform where information is imparted in such a way that all of the mentioned elements above can be interactively accessed. Graphic cards serve as the core of the operating system components, serving as the ones that are responsible for visualizing graphical objects, transmitting them into output equipment such as printers and monitors.
On the other hand, a video card is a hardware component that serves as the interface between the computer and the monitor. It works by providing the means in which the computer can interact through the monitor so that it displays the things that the computer is working on.
Modern-day computers, on the other hand, use the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) as a term that represents graphic cards and make them different from video cards. Professional workstations for video usually have both graphics and video cards in order to create a feed of images, delivering them to a display device.
These days, however, these terms are often interchanged since they are basically the same, serving as an expansion card which produces output images, transmitting them into a device for display. In particular, graphic cards are solely dedicated to video processing. This means that they have their own processing power and memory to perform even the higher requirements for processing for visual data.
A graphic card is similar to a motherboard in the way that it is a printed circuit board that serves as home to the processor and the RAM. They are also referred to as video cards, graphic adapters, and even display cards, determining the computer’s graphics capabilities.
This includes the number of bits that are used in storing color information regarding every pixel, screen resolution, number of colors that display the images, as well as the number of monitors that are connected using the graphics card. The graphic card also features a BIOS Chip (Input/Output System), where the card settings are stored, performing the diagnostics on its memory, as well as the input and output during startup.
A video card is a hardware component that processes any graphics that is generated from the motherboard, transmitting them right into the display unit. It serves as the circuit board, which easily fits in a slot on the motherboard of a computer.
This board is composed of a special electronic circuit that consists of a visual processing unit, a graphics processing unit, and a heat sink that will help in spreading the heat produced. There are also other components in a video card, including the video memory, BIOS, video graphics array, RAMDAC, HDMI, digital visual interface, and display port.
It is the job of the video card to control certain factors for display, including the colors displayed, resolution, as well as the overall speed of the displayed images. AT times, video cards are directly integrated into the CPU or motherboard. One recent advancement in the technology of video cards is the use of graphics accelerators, which is a video card that comes with a processor that works similar to that of a CPU.
These days, these two terms are usually used interchangeably. The reason? They work technically the same. They serve as expansion cards that generate the output images, transferring them into a display device. Graphic cards are created and dedicated solely to video processing. On the other hand, video cards that are integrated into a computer’s motherboard are called o-board or integrated boards. The difference between this two is that a built-in video card features dedicated graphics and integrated graphics. The latter is inferior since they do not have their own cooling system and RAM, which makes them lacking in terms of performing tasks related to visual processing.