The graphics processing unit (GPU) is just as important a component of the SoC of a mobile device as the (CPU). Over the past five years, the rapid development of mobile Android platforms and iOS spurred mobile GPU developers, and no one is surprised today mobile games with three-dimensional graphics the level of the PlayStation 2 or even higher. I dedicated the second article in the series "Educational program on mobile hardware" to GPUs.

Currently, most graphics chips are manufactured using cores: PowerVR (Imagination Technologies), Mali (ARM), Adreno (Qualcomm, formerly ATI Imageon) and GeForce ULP (nVIDIA).

PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies, which recently developed graphics for desktop systems, but under pressure from ATI and nVIDIA was forced to leave this market. PowerVR is developing arguably the most powerful GPUs for mobile devices today. PowerVR chips are used in the production of processors by companies such as Samsung, Apple, Texas Instruments etc. For example, different GPU revisions from PowerVR are installed in all generations Apple iPhone... The series of chips 5 and 5XT remain relevant. The fifth series includes single-core chips: SGX520, SGX530, SGX531, SGX535, SGX540, and SGX545. The 5XT series chips can have from 1 to 16 cores: SGX543, SGX544, SGX554. The specifications of the 6th series (Rogue) are still being specified, but the performance range of the series chips is already known - 100-1000GFLOPS.

Mali are GPUs developed and licensed by UK ARM. Mali chips are part of various SoCs manufactured by Samsung, ST-Ericsson, Rockchip, and others. For example, the Mali-400 MP is part of the Samsung Exynos 421x SoC used in smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy SII and SIII, in two generations of "smartphone tabletmash?" Samsung Note. The Mali-400 MP in two- and four-core versions is relevant today. On the way are the Mali-T604 and Mali-T658 chips, the performance of which is up to 5 times higher than that of the Mali-400.

Adreno is a graphics chip developed by the eponymous division of the American Qualcomm. The name Adreno is an anagram from Radeon. Before Qualcomm, the division belonged to ATI, and the chips were called Imageon. For the past few years, Qualcomm has used 2xx series chips in the production of SoCs: Adreno 200, Adreno 205, Adreno 220, Adreno 225. The last of the list is a brand new chip, made using 28nm technology, the most powerful of the Adreno 2xx series. Its performance is 6 times higher than that of the "old man" Adreno 200. In 2013, more and more devices will receive GPUs Adreno 305 and Adreno 320. Now the 320th is installed in the Nexus 4 and Chinese version Nokia Lumia 920T, in some respects the chip is 2 times more powerful than the 225.

GeForce ULP (ultra-low power) - mobile version a video chip from nVIDIA, included in all generations of Tegra System-on-a-Chip. One of Tegra's most important competitive advantages is specialized content intended only for devices based on this SoC. NVIDIA has traditionally had a close relationship with game developers, and their Content Development team works with them to optimize games for GeForce graphics solutions. To access these games, nVIDIA has even launched the Tegra Zone Android app, a specialized analog of the Android Market where you can download Tegra-optimized apps.

GPU performance is usually measured in three dimensions:

- the number of triangles per second, usually in millions - Mega (MTriangles / s);

- the number of pixels per second, usually in millions - Mega (MPixel / s);

- the number of floating point operations per second, usually in billions - Giga (GFLOPS).

The “flops” need a little explanation. FLOPS (FLoating-point Operations Per Second) is the number of computational operations or instructions performed on floating point (point) operands per second. The floating point operand is a non-integer number (it would be more correct to say “floating point”, because the comma is the sign that separates the integer part of the number from the fractional part in Russian). It will help to understand which graphics processor is installed in your smartphone ctrl + F and the table below. Please note that GPUs of different smartphones operate at different frequencies. To calculate the performance in GFLOPS for specific model it is necessary to divide the number indicated in the column “performance in GFLOPS” by 200 and multiply by the frequency of a single GPU (for example, in the Galaxy SIII, the GPU runs at 533MHz, which means 7.2 / 200 * 533 = 19.188):

Smartphone / tablet name	CPU	GPU	Performance in GFLOPS
Samsung Galaxy S 4	Samsung Exynos 5410	PowerVR SGX544MP3	21.6 @ 200MHz
Htc One	Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 APQ8064T	Adreno 320	20.5 @ 200MHz
Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy Note 10.1	Samsung Exynos 4412	Mali-400 MP4	7.2 @ 200MHz
Samsung Chromebook XE303C12, Nexus 10	Samsung Exynos 5250	Mali-T604 MP4	36 @ 200MHz
Samsung Galaxy S II, Galaxy Note, Tab 7.7, Galaxy Tab 7 Plus	Samsung Exynos 4210	Mali-400 MP4	7.2 @ 200MHz
Samsung Galaxy S, Wave, Wave II, Nexus S, Galaxy Tab, Meizu M9	Samsung Exynos 3110	PowerVR SGX540	3.2 @ 200MHz
Apple iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3gen	Samsung S5PC100	PowerVR SGX535	1.6 @ 200MHz
Lg Optimus G, Nexus 4, Sony Xperia Z	Qualcomm APQ8064 (Krait kernels)	Adreno 320	20.5 @ 200MHz
Htc One XL, Nokia Lumia 920, Lumia 820, Motorola RAZR HD, Razr M, Sony Xperia V	Qualcomm MSM8960 (Krait kernels)	Adreno 225	12.8 @ 200MHz
Htc One S, Windows Phone 8x, Sony Xperia TX / T	Qualcomm MSM8260A	Adreno 220	~ 8.5 * @ 200MHz
Htc Desire S, Incredible S, Desire HD, SonyEricsson Xperia Arc, Nokia Lumia 800, Lumia 710	Qualcomm MSM8255	Adreno 205	~ 4.3 * @ 200MHz
Nokia Lumia 610, Lg P500	Qualcomm MSM7227A	Adreno 200	~ 1.4 * @ 128MHz
Motorola Milestone, Samsung i8910, Nokia N900	TI OMAP3430	PowerVR SGX530	1.6 @ 200MHz
Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Huawei Ascend P1, Ascend D1, Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 ″	TI OMAP4460	PowerVR SGX540	3.2 @ 200MHz
RIM BlackBerry Playbook, Lg Optimus 3D P920, Motorola ATRIX 2, Milestone 3, RAZR, Amazon Kindle Fire 1st and 2nd Generation	TI OMAP4430	PowerVR SGX540	3.2 @ 200MHz
Motorola Defy, Milestone 2, Cliq 2, Defy +, Droid X, Nokia N9, N950, Lg Optimus Black, Samsung Galaxy S scLCD	TI OMAP3630	PowerVR SGX530	1.6 @ 200MHz
Acer Iconia Tab A210 / A211 / A700 / A701 / A510, ASUS Transformer Pad, Google nexus 7, Eee Pad Transformer Prime, Transformer Pad Infinity, Microsoft Surface, Sony Xperia Tablet S, Htc One X / X +, Lg Optimus 4X HD, Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga	nVidia Tegra 3	GeForce ULP	4.8 @ 200MHz
Acer Iconia Tab A500, Iconia Tab A501, Iconia Tab A100, ASUS Eee Pad Slider, Eee Pad Transformer, Htc Sensatoin / XE / XL / 4G, Lenovo IdeaPad K1, ThinkPad Tablet, Lg Optimus Pad, Optimus 2X, Motorola Atrix 4G, Electrify, Photon 4G, Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Sony Tablet P, Tablet S	nVidia Tegra 2	GeForce ULP	3.2 @ 200MHz
Apple iPhone 5	Apple a6	PowerVR SGX543MP3	19.2 @ 200MHz
Apple iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPod touch 5gen, iPad mini	Apple a5	PowerVR SGX543MP2	12.8 @ 200MHz
Apple iPad, iPhone 4, iPod touch 4gen	Apple A4	PowerVR SGX535	1.6 @ 200MHz

* - data are approximate.

I will give another table with the absolute performance values ​​of the most popular smartphones of the upper price range:

* - unofficial data.

The power of mobile graphics is growing from year to year. Already this year, in top smartphones, we can see games of the PS3 / X-Box360 level. Simultaneously with the power, the power consumption of the SoC is greatly increasing and the autonomy of mobile devices is indecently reduced. Well, let's wait for a breakthrough in the production of power supplies!

Another energy eater in modern mobile device Is definitely a display. Screens in mobile phones are becoming more and more beautiful. The displays of smartphones released with a difference of only a year are strikingly different in picture quality. In the next article in the series, I will talk about displays: what types they are, what is PPI, what power consumption depends on, and so on.

Modern video cards, due to the requirements from them of a huge computing power when working with graphics, are equipped with their own commandcenter, in other words - the graphics processor.

This was done in order to "unload" the central processor, which, due to its wide "scope", is simply not able to cope with the requirements put forward by moderngame industry.

Graphic processors (GPU) are absolutely not inferior in complexity to central processors, but due to their narrow specialization, they are able to more efficiently cope with the task of processing graphics, building an image, and then displaying it on a monitor.

If we talk about the parameters, then they are very similar in graphics processors to central processors. These are parameters already known to everyone, such as the microarchitecture of the processor, clock frequency kernel work, production process. But they also have rather specific characteristics. For example, an important characteristic GPU Is the number of Pixel Pipelines. This characteristic determines the number of processed pixels per one clock cycle of the GPU robots. The number of these pipelines can vary, for example, in graphics chips of the Radeon HD 6000 series, their number can be up to 96.

The pixel pipeline is engaged in calculating each subsequent pixel of the next image, taking into account its features. To speed up the rendering process, several parallel pipelines are used, which render different pixels of the same image.

Also, the number of pixel pipelines affects an important parameter - the speed of filling the video card. The fill rate of a video card can be calculated by multiplying the core frequency by the number of pipelines.

Let's calculate the fill rate, for example, for a video card AMD Radeon HD 6990 (fig. 2) The GPU core frequency of this chip is 830 MHz, and the number of pixel pipelines is 96. By simple mathematical calculations (830x96), we come to the conclusion that the fill rate will be 57.2 Gpixel / s.

Rice. 2

In addition to pixel pipelines, there are also so-called texture units in each pipeline. The more texture units, the more textures can be applied in one pipeline pass, which also affects the overall performance of the entire video system. In the aforementioned AMD Radeon HD 6990 chip, the number of texture fetch units is 32x2.

In graphics processors, another type of pipelines can be distinguished - vertex ones, they are responsible for calculating the geometric parameters of a three-dimensional image.

Now, let's look at a step-by-step, somewhat simplified, pipeline calculation process, followed by image formation:

1 - th stage.The data about the vertices of the textures goes to the vertex pipelines, which are involved in calculating the geometry parameters. At this stage, the "T&L" (Transform & Lightning) block is connected. This block is responsible for lighting and image transformation in 3D scenes. Data processing in the vertex pipeline is performed by the Vertex Shader program.

2 - oh stage.At the second stage of image formation, a special Z-buffer is connected to cut off invisible polygons and faces of three-dimensional objects. Then there is the process of filtering textures, for this pixel shaders come into battle. The OpenGL or Direct3D APIs describe standards for working with three-dimensional images... The application calls a certain standard OpenGL or Direct3D function, and the shaders do that function.

3rd stage.At the final stage of building an image in pipelined processing, the data is transferred to a special frame buffer.

So, just now we briefly reviewed the structure and principles of operation of graphics processors, the information, of course, is not "easy" for perception, but for general computer development I think it will be quite useful :)

Hello dear users and lovers of computer hardware. Today we will speculate on what is integrated graphics in a processor, why is it needed at all, and whether such a solution is an alternative to discrete, that is, external video cards.

From the point of view of engineering design, the integrated graphics core, ubiquitous in their products Intel companies and AMD is not a video card per se. It is a video chip that has been integrated into the CPU architecture to fulfill the basic duties of a discrete accelerator. But let's deal with everything in more detail.

In this article, you will learn:

History of appearance

Companies first began embedding graphics in their own chips in the mid-2000s. Intel started development with Intel GMA, however this technology showed itself rather poorly, and therefore was unsuitable for video games. As a result, the famous HD Graphics technology is born (at the moment the latest representative of the line is HD graphics 630 in the eighth generation of Coffee Lake chips). The video core on the Westmere architecture made its debut, as part of the Arrandale mobile chips and the desktop ones - Clarkdale (2010).

AMD took a different path. The company first bought out ATI Electronics, a once-cool graphics card maker. Then she began to pore over AMD's own Fusion technology, creating her own APUs - a central processing unit with an integrated video core (Accelerated Processing Unit). The first generation chips made their debut as part of the Liano architecture, and then Trinity. Well, the graphics of the Radeon r7 series for a long time were registered in the composition of laptops and netbooks of the middle class.

Advantages of embedded solutions in games

So. What is an integrated card for and what are its differences from a discrete one.

We will try to make a comparison with an explanation of each position, making everything as reasoned as possible. Let's start with such characteristics as performance. We will consider and compare the most relevant solutions at the moment from Intel (HD 630 with a graphics accelerator frequency from 350 to 1200 MHz) and AMD (Vega 11 with a frequency of 300-1300 MHz), as well as the advantages that these solutions provide.
Let's start with the cost of the system. Built-in graphics allow you to save a lot on the purchase of a discrete solution, up to $ 150, which is critical when creating the most economical PC for office and use.

The frequency of the AMD graphics accelerator is noticeably higher, and the performance of the adapter from the red ones is significantly higher, which indicates the following indicators in the same games:

The game	Settings	Intel	AMD
PUBG	FullHD, low	8-14 fps	26-36 fps
Gta v	FullHD, medium	15-22 fps	55-66 fps
Wolfenstein ii	HD, low	9-14 fps	85–99 fps
Fortnite	FullHD, medium	9-13 fps	36-45 fps
Rocket league	FullHD, high	15-27 fps	35-53 fps
CS: GO	FullHD, maximum	32–63 fps	105-164 fps
Overwatch	FullHD, medium	15-22 fps	50-60 fps

As you can see, Vega 11 - the best choice for inexpensive "gaming" systems, since the adapter's performance in some cases reaches the level of a full-fledged GeForce GT 1050. And in most online battles it shows itself perfectly.

For now, only the AMD Ryzen 2400G comes with this graphics, but it's definitely worth checking out.

Option for office tasks and home use

What are the most common requirements for your PC? If you exclude games, you get the following set of parameters:

• watching movies in HD quality and videos on Youtube (FullHD and in rare cases 4K);
• work with the browser;
• listening to music;
• communication with friends or colleagues using instant messengers;
• Application Development;
• office tasks ( Microsoft Office and similar programs).

All of these items work fine with the integrated graphics core at resolutions up to FullHD.
The only nuance that must be taken into account without fail is support for video outputs that motherboard on which you are going to install the processor. Check this point in advance so that there are no problems in the future.

Disadvantages of integrated graphics

Since we figured out the pros, we need to work out the disadvantages of the solution.

• The main disadvantage of such an undertaking is productivity. Yes, you can play with a clear conscience more or less modern toys on low and high settings, however, graphics lovers will definitely not like this idea. Well, if you work with graphics professionally (processing, rendering, video editing, post-production), and even on 2-3 monitors, then the integrated video type will definitely not suit you.

• Moment number 2: lack of its own high-speed memory (in modern cards these are GDDR5, GDDR5X and HBM). Formally, a video chip can use at least 64 GB of memory, but where will all of it come from? That's right, from the operational. This means that it is necessary to build the system in advance in such a way that there is enough RAM for both work and graphics tasks. Keep in mind that the speed of modern DDR4 modules is much lower than that of GDDR5, and therefore more time will be spent on data processing.
• The next drawback is heat dissipation. In addition to its own nuclei, another one appears in the process, which, in theory, warms up no less. It is possible to cool all this splendor with a boxed (complete) turntable, but get ready for periodic underreporting of frequencies in especially complex calculations. Buying a more powerful cooler solves the problem.
• Well, the last nuance is the impossibility of upgrading video without replacing the processor. In other words, in order to improve the integrated video core, you literally have to buy a new processor. Dubious benefit, isn't it? In this case, it is easier to purchase a discrete accelerator after a while. Manufacturers like AMD and nVidia offer great solutions for all tastes.

Outcomes

Integrated graphics - great option in 3 cases:

• you need a temporary video card, since there was not enough money for an external one;
• the system was originally conceived as superbudgetary;
• you are creating a home media station (HTPC) that focuses on the embedded core.

Hopefully one less problem in your head, and now you know what manufacturers create their APUs for.

In the next articles, we will talk about terms such as virtualization and more. Stay tuned to keep up with all the hot topics related to iron.

GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is a processor dedicated exclusively to graphics processing and floating point computing. It primarily exists to facilitate the work of the main processor when it comes to resource-intensive games or applications with 3D graphics. When you play a game, the GPU is responsible for creating graphics, colors and textures, while the CPU can do the artificial intelligence or calculations of the game's mechanics.

What do we look at first when choosing a smartphone? Aside from the cost for a moment, the first thing we do, of course, is the screen size. Then we are interested in the camera, the amount of the operative, the number of cores and the frequency of the processor. And here everything is simple: the more, the better, and the less, the worse, respectively. However, modern devices also use a graphics processor, aka GPU. What it is, how it works and why it is important to know about it, we will describe below.

The GPU architecture is not much different from the CPU architecture, however it is more optimized for effective work with graphics. If you force the GPU to do any other calculations, it will show itself from the worst side.

Video cards that are connected separately and operate at high powers exist only in laptops and desktop computers... If we are talking about -devices, then we are talking about integrated graphics and what we call SoC (System-on-a-Chip). For example, the processor has an integrated Adreno 430 graphics processor. The memory it uses for its work is system memory, while graphics cards in desktop PCs are allocated memory available only to them. True, there are also hybrid chips.

While a multi-core processor runs on high speeds, a GPU has many processor cores running on low speeds and dealing only with the calculation of vertices and pixels. Vertex machining mainly revolves around a coordinate system. The GPU handles geometric tasks by creating three-dimensional space on the screen and allowing objects to move within it.

Pixel processing is more complex and requires a lot of computing power... At this point, the GPU applies various layers, applies effects, does everything to create complex textures and realistic graphics. After both processes have been processed, the result is transferred to the screen of your smartphone or tablet. All this happens millions of times a second while you are playing a game.

Of course, this story is about GPU operation is very superficial, but it is enough to get the correct general idea and be able to keep a conversation with friends or an electronics seller, or understand why your device is so hot during the game. Later, we will definitely discuss the advantages of certain GPUs in working with specific games and tasks.

Based on materials from AndroidPit

The initial material for rendering is a set of triangles of various sizes, from which all objects of the virtual world are composed: landscape, game characters, monsters, weapons, etc. However, by themselves, the models created from triangles look like wire frames. Therefore, textures are superimposed on them - colored two-dimensional "wallpaper". Both textures and models are placed in the memory of the graphics card, and then, at the creation of each frame of the game action, a rendering cycle is performed, consisting of several stages.

1. The game program sends the graphics processor information describing the game scene: the composition of the objects present, their color, position relative to the point of view, lighting and visibility. Additional data is also transmitted that characterizes the scene and allows the video card to increase the realism of the resulting image by adding fog, blur, glare, etc.

2. The GPU places three-dimensional models in the frame, determines which of the included triangles are visible and cuts off those hidden by other objects or, for example, shadows.

Then the light sources are created and their effect on the color of the illuminated objects is determined. This stage of rendering is called Transformation & Lighting (T&L).

3. Textures are applied to the visible triangles using various filtering technologies. Bilinear filtering involves imposing two versions of the texture with different resolutions on a triangle. The result of its use is clearly distinguishable boundaries between areas of clear and blurred textures that appear on three-dimensional surfaces perpendicular to the direction of view. Trilinear filtering, using three variations of the same texture, produces softer transitions.

However, as a result of the use of both technologies, only those textures that are perpendicular to the axis of view look really clear. When viewed from an angle, they are very blurred. To prevent this, anisotropic filtering is used.

This method of texture filtering is set in the settings of the video adapter driver or directly in the computer game. In addition, you can change the strength of anisotropic filtering: 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x - the more "x", the clearer the images will be on inclined surfaces. But with an increase in the filtering power, the load on the video card increases, which can lead to a decrease in the operating speed and to a decrease in the number of frames generated per unit of time.

At the stage of texturing, various additional effects can be used. For example, Enironmental Mapping allows you to create surfaces that reflect the game scene: mirrors, shiny metal objects, etc. Another impressive effect is obtained with the use of bump mapping (bump mapping), due to which the light striking the surface at an angle, creates the appearance of relief.
Texturing is the last stage of rendering, after which the picture goes into the frame buffer of the video card and is displayed on the monitor screen.

Electronic components of the video card

Now that it has become clear how the process of building a three-dimensional image takes place, we can list the technical characteristics of the components of the video card, which determine the speed of the process. The main components of a video card are the graphics processor (GPU - Graphics Processing Unit) and video memory.

GPU

One of the main characteristics of this component (like a PC's CPU) is its clock speed. All other things being equal, the higher it is, the faster the data processing takes place, and, consequently, the number of frames per second (FPS - frames per second) in computer games increases. The frequency of the GPU is an important, but not the only parameter affecting its performance - modern models from Nvidia and ATI, which have a comparable level of performance, are characterized by different GPU frequencies.

For Nvidia adapters with high performance, the typical GPU clock frequencies are from 550 MHz to 675 MHz. The GPU frequency below 500 MHz is found in middling and cheap low-performance cards.
At the same time, the GPUs of "top-end" cards from ATI have frequencies from 600 to 800 MHz, and even the cheapest video adapters do not drop the GPU frequency below 500 MHz.

However, while Nvidia GPUs are slower than ATI's GPUs, they deliver at least the same level of performance, and often even better. The fact is that other characteristics of the GPU are no less important than the clock frequency.

1. The number of texture units (TMU - Texture Mapping Units) - GPU elements that map textures to triangles. The speed of building a three-dimensional scene directly depends on the number of TMUs.
2. The number of rendering pipelines (ROP - Render Output Pipeline) - blocks that perform "service" functions (a couple of examples, pls). Modern GPUs tend to have fewer ROPs than texture units and this limits the overall texturing speed. For example, the chip of the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX video card has 32 texture units and 24 ROPs. The ATI Radeon HD 3870 video card processor has only 16 texture models and 16 ROPs.

The performance of texture units is expressed in such a value as fillrate - texturing speed measured in texels per second. The GeForce 8800 GTX video card has a fill rate of 18.4 billion tex / s. But a more objective indicator is the fill rate, measured in pixels, since it reflects the speed of the ROP. For the GeForce 8800 GTX, this value is 13.8 billion pixels / s.
3. The number of shader units (shader processors) that - as the name suggests - handle pixel and vertex shaders. Modern games use shaders heavily, so the number of shader units is critical to determining performance.

Not so long ago, GPUs had separate modules for executing pixel and vertex shaders. Nvidia's GeForce 8000 series graphics cards and ATI Radeon HD 2000 adapters were the first to migrate to a unified shader architecture. The GPUs of these cards have units capable of handling both pixel and vertex shaders - universal shader processors (stream processors). This approach allows you to fully leverage computing resources chip with any ratio of pixel and vertex calculations in the game code. In addition, in modern graphics processors, shader units often operate at a frequency higher than the GPU clock speed (for example, in the GeForce 8800 GTX this frequency is 1350 MHz versus the "general" 575 MHz).

Please note that Nvidia and ATI calculate the number of shader processors in their chips differently. For example, the Radeon HD 3870 has 320 such units, while the GeForce 8800 GTX has only 128. In fact, ATI indicates their component components instead of entire shader processors. Each shader processor contains five components, so the total number of shader units in the Radeon HD 3870 is only 64, which is why this video card is slower than the GeForce 8800 GTX.

Video card memory

Video memory in relation to the GPU performs the same functions as RAM in relation to the PC's central processor: it stores all the "building material" needed to create an image - textures, geometric data, shader programs, etc.

What video memory characteristics affect the performance of a graphics card

1. Volume. Modern games use a huge number of textures with high resolution, and they require an appropriate amount of video memory to accommodate them. Most of the "top" video adapters and cards in the mid-price range released today are equipped with 512 MB of memory, which cannot be increased later. Cheaper video cards are equipped with half the memory capacity, which is no longer enough for modern games.

In case of insufficient memory, the GPU is forced to constantly load textures from random access memory A PC that is much slower to communicate with may result in performance degradation. On the other hand, an excessively large amount of memory may not give any increase in speed, since the additional "space" will simply not be used. It makes sense to buy a video adapter with 1 GB of memory only if it belongs to the "top" products (ATI Radeon HD 4870, Nvidia GeForce 9800, and newest maps series GeForce GTX 200).

2. Frequency. This parameter for modern video cards can vary from 800 to 3200 MHz and depends, first of all, on the type of memory chips used. DDR 2 chips can provide an operating frequency of 800 MHz and are used only in the cheapest graphics adapters... GDDR 3 and GDDR 4 memory enhances frequency range up to 2400 MHz. The latest ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics cards use GDDR-5 memory at a fantastic frequency of 3200 MHz.

The memory frequency, like the GPU frequency, has a big impact on the performance of the video card in games, especially when using full-screen anti-aliasing. All other things being equal, the higher the memory frequency, the higher the performance. the GPU will be less "idle" waiting for data to arrive. The memory frequency of 1800 MHz is the lower limit that separates high-performance cards from less-fast ones.

3. The bit width of the video memory bus has a much stronger effect on the overall performance of the card than the memory frequency. It shows how much data the memory can transfer in one clock cycle. Accordingly, a twofold increase in the width of the memory bus is equivalent to doubling its clock frequency. Most modern video cards have a 256-bit memory bus. Reducing the bit depth to 128, or even more so to 64 bits, deals a strong blow to performance. On the other hand, in the most expensive video cards the bus can be "expanded" up to 512 bits (so far only the latest GeForce GTX 280 can boast of this), which turns out to be very useful, taking into account the power of their graphics processors.

Where to find information about the technical specifications of the video card

If a graphics card has some outstanding parameters (high clock speed of the processor and memory, its size), then they are usually indicated directly on the box. But the most complete specifications of the video adapters and GPUs on which they are based can only be found on the Internet. General information is posted on the corporate websites of GPU manufacturers: Nvidia (www.nvidia.ru) and ATI (www.ati.amd.com/ru). Details can be found on unofficial websites dedicated to video cards - www.nvworld.ru and www.radeon.ru. The electronic encyclopedia Wikipedia (www.ru.wikipedia.org) will be a good help. Users buying a card with an eye on overclocking can use the resource www.overclockers.ru.

Simultaneous use of two video cards

In order to get maximum performance, you can install two video cards in your computer at once. Manufacturers have provided appropriate technologies for this - SLI (Scalable Link Interface, used by Nvidia cards) and CrossFire (developed by ATI). In order to take advantage of them, the motherboard must not only have two PCI-E slots for video cards, but also support one of these technologies. Many "motherboards" based on Intel chipsets can use ATI boards in CrossFire mode, but two (or even three!) Video cards from Nvidia can be combined into one "team" only with motherboards based on chipsets of the same company. If the motherboard does not have support for these technologies, two video cards will be able to work with it, but only one will be used in games, and the second will only make it possible to display an image on a couple of additional monitors.
Note that using two video cards does not double the performance. The average result worth counting on is 50% speed gain. In addition, the full potential of the tandem will be unleashed only with the use of a powerful central processor and a high-resolution monitor.

What are shaders

Shaders are microprograms present in the game code that can be used to modify the process of building a virtual scene, opening up possibilities that are unattainable with traditional 3D rendering tools. Modern game graphics are unthinkable without shaders.

Vertex shaders change the geometry of three-dimensional objects, so that you can implement natural animation of complex models of game characters, physically correct deformation of objects, or real water waves. Pixel shaders are used to change the color of pixels and allow you to create effects such as realistic circles and ripples on water, complex lighting, and surface relief. Besides, with the help of pixel shaders, post-processing of the frame is carried out: all kinds of "cinematic" effects of blurring moving objects, super-bright light, etc.

There are several versions of the Shader Model implementation. All modern video cards support pixel and vertex shaders version 4.0, which provide higher realism of effects compared to the previous version - the third version. Shader Model 4.0 is supported by the DirectX 10 API, which works exclusively in Windows environment Vista. In addition, the computer games themselves must be "sharpened" for DirectX 10.

Does the old system need an AGP video card

If the motherboard of your PC is equipped with an AGP port, the options for upgrading the video card are severely limited. The maximum that the owner of such a system can afford is video cards of the Radeon HD 3850 series from AMD (ATI).

By today's standards, they are below average performance. In addition, the vast majority of AGP motherboards are designed for legacy Intel processors Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon XP, so the overall system performance will still not be high enough for modern 3D graphics. Just on motherboards for AMD processors Ahtlon 64 with Socket 939 is worth installing new graphics cards with AGP port. In all other cases, it is better to buy new computer with PCI-E interface, DDR 2 (or DDR 3) memory and modern CPU.

Material tags: graphics card, video, card, accelerator, graphics

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