How a Graphics Card Works - Page 1

No other PC component better illustrates the technological advances that have been made over the last decade than the graphics card. While CPU's have jumped in leaps and bounds from 33MHz to well over a hundred times that speed today, the end result is arguably nowhere near as cool as that produced by graphics cards.

Sure, calculating Pi to a million decimal places is quicker than ever, but with graphics cards you can quite literally see the difference:

Doom - one of the first titles to kick start the 3D gaming genre

Doom 3 - graphically speaking, it's a step or two up from its predecessor

There's no denying that modern graphics cards are powerful pieces of hardware, but how exactly do they do their job?

Amazingly, despite some graphics cards costing as much as £500 (more than the rest of the PC in some circumstances), most people are still content with the idea that 'graphics card = pictures', with no further questions about how it all works!

If however you're even the slightest bit curious, then read on, as today's article will discuss just how a graphics card can turn a bunch of 1's and 0's into something like this gruesome chap:

He's actually a lovely dancer

*Note* This isn't a 'how to' on the DirectX or OpenGL programming languages, or a detailed discussion on how any one hardware product in particular (ATI/NVIDIA/Matrox etc..) works.

This article will instead cover the basic hardware and software technologies that all mainstream graphics cards use to deliver images to our monitors on a daily basis (you DO use your computer everyday, don't you?!).

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Article Navigation:

• Introduction
• The Basics
• Engines, Their Drivers and A Little History
• Telling Your Buffers from Your Outputs
• Feeding the Frame Buffer
• Surface Colours and Maps
  • MIP Maps
  • Bump Mapping
• Lights, Camera, Action!
• On The Buses
  • Interfaces
• Shaders
• Pipelines
• The Rendering Process - An Overview
• Improving Image Quality - AA/AF/HDR
  • Antialiasing
  • Anisotropic Filtering
  • High Dynamic Range
• End Frame
  • Links