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Graphics Card or GPU? Everything you need to know before buying a graphics card

Posted by Josh Fewell on Nov 17th 2020

Graphics Card or GPU? Everything you need to know before buying a graphics card

The graphics processing unit (GPU) of your computer) is a crucial component in the speed and capability of your system when running demanding applications. It's sometimes encouraged, or even required that your system has an alternate processor that is dedicated to the task of graphics processing. The way most computers accomplish this is by the use of a graphics card.

What is a GPU? Often the terms graphics card, video card, and GPU are used interchangeably, but technically, the GPU refers to the actual chip on the PCB of the graphics card. Sometimes, the same GPU is used on several different graphics cards (with some modification). For example, the Nvidia GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 both use the Pascal GP104 chip. Some graphics cards even have 2 GPUs on the card, but you will only notice an increase in performance if the program you are running is optimized to support dual GPUs (more on this later).

Architecture New GPU architectures (the technology used to build the GPUs) are developed every couple years from AMD and Nvidia. With the release of new architectures, the performance of new cards is dramatically increased. While the specs may be similar to older cards, it is not realistic to compare cards on different architectures by specs alone. It would be like comparing a child and his dad taking groceries into the house from the car. While they both move at the same speed and cover the same distance, the dad can carry much more groceries than the son. Newer architectures also require less power to complete the same tasks.

GPU Chip Brands The two most popular brands that produce GPUs are Nvidia and AMD. Nvidia’s name for dual GPU configurations is SLI (scalable link interface), and AMD’s is called Crossfire. Both of these brands have different names for the cores on their GPUs. Nvidia cores are called CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) Cores, and AMD cores are called Stream Processors. The speed of all these cores varies from architecture to architecture.



Feature Nvidia AMD
Cores CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) Stream Processors
Dual GPU Configurations

(must be identical cards)

SLI (Scalable link interface) Crossfire
Current Architecture Ampere (30 series) RDNA (Radeon DNA) (Radeon RX 5000M series)
Previous Architecture Turing (20 series) Graphics Core Next (Radeon RX 600 series)
Previous Architecture Pascal (10 Series) TeraScale 3

(Radeon RX 600 series)

Manufacturers/Resellers While different companies make the GPU chips, even more companies manufacture the physical graphics cards. Companies like Dell, HP, EVGA, PNY, and ASUS all produce their own variations of the same card by changing the cooling configurations, and different I/O ports. Different manufacturers also produce the cards running different base clock speeds (the reason why some offer more fans for cooling). As you can see below, these three cards are all using the Nvidia GTX 2080 GPU but offer different cooling configurations and features. 

Integrated and Portable GPUs Sometimes CPUs offer integrated graphics, meaning the CPU handles all the graphics processing without the need for a GPU. GPU manufacturers also produce alternative models of graphics cards designed for mobile devices like laptops and portable gaming devices. They are low powered versions that produce slightly worse performance using the same chip with lower clock speeds. Laptop and mobile device power supplies are limited and are unable to support traditional desktop graphics cards.

Enterprise Cards vs Consumer Cards Enterprise cards (RTX Titan, Quadro, Radeon Instinct, tesla, etc.) are designed for computer aided design (CAD) software and used for large rendering projects like 3D rendering and making games. Manufacturers also offer more support for these cards, but the price tag is much more expensive. While enterprise cards are more about internal processing, consumer cards (2060, 2070, Radeon 7, etc.) are more focused on video output. They are designed to either add more displays to your system or improve resolution and framerate. They are generally used for gaming or professionals that want to expand their work over multiple displays.

So what GPU is right for me? Hopefully, this information will not only aid you on your graphics card shopping journey, but also clear up any misconceptions you had about the GPU market. If you have any questions about a GPU in our store or any tech related questions, feel free to write to us using the ‘Contact Us’ page on our site.

Other helpful links:

https://www.newegg.com/insider/how-to-choose-graphics-card/

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-buying-guide,5844.html

https://techguided.com/how-to-choose-a-graphics-card/