Each graphics card is basically composed of "display main chip", "display cache" (short for display memory), "BIOS", digital-to-analog converter (RAMDAC), "interface of graphics card" and capacitors and resistors on the card. Multifunctional graphics cards are also equipped with video output and input for special needs. With the development of technology, most graphics cards have integrated RAMDAC into the main chip.
As the name implies, the display main chip is naturally the core of the graphics card, such as TNT2, GeForce2, GeForce MX of nVIDIA, and GeForce 4 which just appeared in the market. Their main task is to process the video information input by the system, and build and render it. The performance of the main display chip directly determines the performance of the graphics card. Different display chips have different internal structure and performance, and their prices are also very different. Generally speaking, the more expensive the graphics card, the better its performance. About the introduction of the display main chip, we will introduce it in detail in the third section.
memory
The main chip of the graphics card plays an important role in the whole graphics card, but the size of the memory is also directly related to the performance of the graphics card. At present, there are mainly several kinds of memories:
Synchronous graphics memory
SGRAM is a relatively new kind of video memory, which is specially designed for graphics cards. It improves the shortcoming of low transmission rate of video memory in the past and makes it possible to improve the performance of graphics cards. However, due to its high design and manufacturing costs, it is rare in original ordinary graphics cards. However, with the maturity of manufacturing technology this year, its manufacturing cost has been reduced a lot. Now many graphics cards use S-SGRAM as memory. The biggest advantage of S-Gram is that it supports block operation of video memory. In software or games that support block operation, its performance advantage is obvious relative to SDRAM, but in ordinary applications, its performance may not be as good as SDRAM with much lower price. However, SGRAM has a good overclocking ability and is suitable for graphics cards that need overclocking.
Synchronous dynamic random-access memory
SDRAM is the most widely used memory, and almost all graphics cards in the market use SDRAM memory. The design idea of SDRAM is completely different from that of earlier products. It can read and write data in one clock cycle, thus saving waiting time. SDRAM has now become the leading product in the video memory market, mainly because of its low price and good performance.