Graphic Processing Unit

Talking about multimedia is talking about Personal Computer. Talking about graphic in Personal Computer means talking about Graphic Processing Unit (GPU). Without GPU in PC, it will be no image there. So what is GPU? GPU is dedicated graphics rendering device for personal computer, workstation, or game console. A GPU can sit on top of a video card, but is integrated directly into the mainboard in more than 90% of desktop and notebook computers. Most of us call it mainboard GPU. It means the chipset is integrated into the mainboard.

Nowadays, The most powerful class of GPUs typically interface with the motherboard by means of an expansion slot such as PCI Express (PCIE) or Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) and can usually be replaced or upgraded with relative ease, assuming the motherboard is capable of supporting the upgrade.So, if you wanna get more powerfull GPU, you can upgrade it when you want it. Its different with mainboard GPU, because mainboard GPU is can't change without change the mainboard.

Modern GPUs use most of their transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics. They were initially used to accelerate the memory-intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons, later adding units to accelerate geometric calculations such as translating vertices into different coordinate systems. Recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations supported by CPUs, oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing, and very high-precision color spaces.

Untill now, there is two active producers for PC's GPU. Nvidia and ATI. Their competition to produce the best GPU is never end, or not end yet.