What is a Graphics Processing Unit?

A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is used to load graphics on a computer. This could be pictures, videos or even games. There are two main Graphics Card Units. One of these types is integrated graphics which is included with most Central Processing Units (CPU) or occasionally the motherboard. However, integrated graphics are no way as powerful as as dedicated graphics or commonly called a Graphics Card. This card uses more power and usually performs much better than integrated graphics.

Integrated graphics are commonly in laptops, small PCs and all-in-one PCs. Whereas powerful graphics cards are in the majority of desktop computers and occasionally in high-end laptops.

Some may get confused between the GPU and CPU. However, the main thing that differs is that CPUs have a few but powerful cores, whereas GPUs have less powerful but thousands of cores. This makes CPUs better for doing one task at a time like using word as they are more powerful and can handle it, and on the other hand GPUs are better at performing parallel tasks such as gaming where you need to load in lots of figures.

This video covers the basics of what a Graphics card is:

Here is an example of a game running on integrated graphics and dedicated graphics. The dedicated graphics card is able to run more predecessors meaning more particles and objects can appear without slowing anything else down.

Another use for a graphics card would be video editing. When editing a video you need to render the footage every so often so that you can playback the video while you edit it. However, a dedicated GPU can render footage in real time and because integrated graphics runs of the CPU it simply can't. Here is a comparison

Hopefully you understand the basics of a graphics card. Thank you for listening :)