What’s Really Inside A GPU?

Now, if you don’t know what a GPU is, it stands for Graphics Processing Unit. So hopefully now you can guess what it does. It’s the reason you're reading this right now. The images you see on your phone or monitor consist of tiny little squares called pixels. Pixels are minuscule and most phones nowadays have over 1 million pixels. The job of a computer is to display an image using these pixels so you can do what you're doing right now. To create this image, it needs a translator — a device to receive binary data from the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and turn it into a picture. This is what GPU’s are used for. However, some computers and phones do not have a separate ‘card’ for graphics rather it is built into the motherboard. But we’re not focusing on that, we’re focusing on the separate GPU.

In this article, we will study the basic components of the graphics card, what they do and how they all work together to bring a picture to your screen.

A graphics card is like a business. If one department of the business wants something they request for it to be done by another department. In this case, the boss (CPU) wants an image to be projected to the screen, so they ask the graphic designer (GPU) to create the image. The graphic designer then ships the image off to the monitor through a cable which is how you see it on your screen. A graphics card contains four main components: a processor, memory (storage), a connection to the motherboard and a connection to the monitor. We will now take a closer at the memory (RAM), motherboard and CPU in more detail.

RAM

RAM or random access memory is a space where the graphics card stores its data about each pixel. For example, the RAM stores the location of the pixel on the screen and its colour. However, currently, the signal is digital meaning a set of discrete values (like a light ‘on’ or ‘off’ switch). To fix this you need a RAMDAC which is directly connected to the RAM and converts the digital signal into an analog signal meaning an unlimited set of values such as a dial on your radio. This analog signal means that the final picture can be sent off to the monitor.

Motherboard and CPU

The motherboard is like the flagship of the PC. It is a hub that connects the GPU, CPU, RAM and storage so that they can interact with each other. The GPU needs this interaction to produce a picture. The main component it uses is the CPU. The CPU controls what happens with every part of the system. The GPU has thousands of tiny cores which means it is great at multitasking. Thinking back to how many pixels there are it’s a heck of a job to undertake to put an image, a colour on every single one of those pixels. The CPU has a few cores ranging from 1 to 128 but the average for a CPU these days is around 4. That means they are a lot larger and aren’t so good at multitasking, but what they are good at is running your computer. Without a CPU your computer could not run, so the GPU is only there to compliment the CPU and aid it. It is possible to run a computer without a GPU but as I mentioned before the GPU aids the CPU so your videos and images will load quicker which is always a good thing.

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