Video display boards

Graphics cards

A Video display boards is one of the most important components that are connected to the motherboard. It is a universal device capable of converting a digital stream into an image that we see on the screen of a laptop, smartphone, tablet, or monitor of a stationary computer. Modern videoboards allow you to broadcast an image even to a TV, which is used instead of a monitor with a special connector.

Purpose and main types of malfunctions

So, the main purpose of graphics cards is the transmission of visual information in a “digestible” version for the human eye. The functions of the videoboard allow you to watch movies, enjoy fascinating computer games, work with documents and graphics. All these processes are possible because of the videoboard, which visualize all the information processing on the monitor.
The malfunctions of the videoboard can be determined without any difficulties. They are simply visible even to a common user: it is either the image is of bad quality, or there is no picture at all.

There are two types of non-functionality of a videoboard: software- and hardware breakdown.
Troubleshooting is solved by reinstalling the driver, or the operating system as in whole. A hardware failure requires, as a rule, replacement of a videoboard. In the case when the videoboard is integrated into the motherboard, you cannot do a simple replacement of the device; you will have to change the entire motherboard.

Technical characteristics and way of development of graphics cards

At the dawn of the development of computer technologies, video cards were simply expansion cards of a little power. Modern video cards already have a huge potential. The development of technologies is associated with the rapid development of software and hardware, with which a “weak” graphics card cannot cope. All the delights of modern graphics cards are already appreciated by gamers, designers, fans of watching high quality videos with high resolution. The quality of the image depends on the card’s power, i.e. from the processing speed and the transfer of digital or analog information to the screen.

Development of videoboards and video adapters

The first boards were of low power, which, however, fully corresponded to the tasks assigned to them. The video card “ISA” had 512 KB of memory, was intended for displaying simple solutions and was encountered in the first generations of computing devices.

In the future, the rapid development of graphics cards began with the improvement of the rest of the “hardware”:

“VESA” was the next generation of boards with an expanded bus of 2 MB. It was installed in quantity of two slots all over the motherboard.
“PCI” is probably the most popular version of the videoboards that can be found in PCs up to now, but this video adapter is not perfect anymore and is not suitable for all kinds of video cards.
“AGP” (several versions) was released based on the PCI video adapter and was actively used from 1997 to 2004.
“PCI-Express “adapter was released and used for the first time in 2004. It has being actively used till now.

Since the beginning of this century, two companies NVIDIA and ATI are the world leaders in the production of videoboards. The assortment of their videoboards fully reflects the requirements for high quality video, which was especially suited to gamers. The video card is considered to be one of the most expensive components of the “filling” of the computer; however, it does not stop people in pursuit of improving their gadgets.

All modern video adapters work in two modes: graphics and text, which allows boards to function in the most appropriate way. The performance of the videoboard today is affected by such parameters: