Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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Many PCs come with IGP (Integrated Graphics Platform) graphics capabilities are built into the main system motherboard IGP is not powerful enough for the demands of modern 3D games

Office work require only basic performance Some PCs also have a separate graphics adapter

Expansion card that processes instructions sent by the CPU via a dedicated graphics processor

Acts like a small motherboard specifically dedicated to display

For serious graphics, video editing or gaming, a good graphics card becomes an important consideration

Graphics card (Video card or adapter)

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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Graphics cards use their own dedicated memory A card with 64MB is adequate for basic office tasks At least 512MB is required for the latest games and video applications Graphics card memory cannot usually be upgraded later IGP systems often use a portion of system RAM, which may reduce the computer's

overall performance

The quality of a display system largely depends on its resolution How many pixels it can display & how many bits are used to represent each pixel A pixel (Picture Element), is a single point in a graphic image Graphics monitors display pictures by dividing the display screen into millions of

pixels The pixels are so close together that they appear connected

Graphics cards

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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The number of bits used to represent each pixel determines how many colors or shades of gray can be displayed

In 8-bit color mode, the color monitor uses 8 bits for each pixel, making it possible to display 28 (256) different colors or shades of gray

True Color systems use At least 24 bits per pixel

8 bits for Red,

8 bits for Blue,

8 bits for Green

allowing them to display more than 16 million different colors

Graphics cards

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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Graphics monitors arrange pixels in rows and columns320 x 200 pixels800 x 600 pixels 1024 x 768 pixels 1280 x 1024 pixels

Bits per pixel8, 16, 24, 32

Graphics

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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2D graphics cards tend to use between 1MB and 4MB of RAM for the screen800 x 600 pixels => 1,440,000 bytes1024 x 768 pixels => 2,359,296 bytes1280 x 1024 pixels => 3,932,160 bytes

Values calculated assuming 3 bytes per pixel (24-bit colour, 16.7M colours)

Graphics

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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Combined 2D and 3D graphics adapters are popular at the moment

3D graphics are mostly used for games

3D graphics uses a lot more memory than 2D – 64MB at least, 2048MB becoming popular

3D-Graphics

Radeon 5670 © AMD 2010

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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The interface is the slot required in your PC to run the card

Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP, old) and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express-PCI Express (PCIe)

 The current standard is PCIe Additional numbers relate to the throughput data that

the card can handle, e.g. 4X, 8X or 16x

The interface

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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AGP 8x can carry 2GBps. PCIe 1.1 each lane can carry

250MBps and PCIe 2 500Mps. Each slots carry 1, 4, 8, 16, 32 lanes

between the motherboard and the card.

Therefore 32 lanes slot gives 8GBps (250MBps x 32) for PCIe 1.1.

Shorter lane card can be used in a longer lane slot.

AGP and PCIe

1 lane

4 lanes

16 lanes

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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2D applicationsWord processing, Flash, etc…

Why do we need 3D graphics?3D gamesGUIsVisualisation

Graphic card MemoryGraphics Processing Unit (GPU)

2D and 3D cards

DirectX 9

DirectX 10

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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Video movie digitisation (recording to a PC) is often done using a separate add-in card [c.f. Sky+]

Some 2D/3D graphics cards also have moderate “video grabbing” capability

Video playback sounds like a job for a 2D graphics card - but sometimes they need help

Modern graphics cards often have some movie acceleration, particularly for DVD and video conferencing

Video Capture and Playback

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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Computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to/from a computer

Most PCs come with some form of sound capability built-in on the motherboard

Dedicated sound cardbetter sound qualitydeals separately with sound, thus saving system resources

Sound Card-Audio Card

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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Sound cards come in many forms – the market spans simple business output, gaming and serious music making

Most sound cards can record and play back sound at CD quality or better

Many sound cards have two/three different types of sound-synthesis; Wave-table, use actual "digital samples" of real musical instruments to generate

music Frequency modulation – Tone is changed by mixing different sounding frequency

tone , sounds card use the FM technology to generate sounds simulating various instruments (the cheapest)

Physical modelling – simulating sounds through programming, algorithms with set of parameters

Sound

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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Converters (ADC and DAC) Sample rate generator

Provide the clock for converters

Processor (DSP) Memory Connectors

Line-outLine-inMic-inSubwoofer

Audio Card Components

Graphics Cards and Sound Cards

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We have discussed the hardware technology for graphics and sound in the PC.

Graphic cards2D and 3D cardsConnector types

Sound cardsCharacteristicsComponents

Summary