A GPU is a graphical processing unit which is dedicated to the graphics, it is used to enhance and accelerate the building and manipulation of images to buffer in frame. GPU are found is hundreds of different technology systems such as mobiles, tablets, games consoles, hand-held’s, computers and laptops. Recently new computers and laptops have dedicated graphics built in so there isn’t a dedicated CPU and GPU but they are built together therefore they are far less powerful.
There are four different types of GPU including Dedicated graphics cards, Integrated graphics solutions, Hybrid solutions and Stream processing and General Purpose GPU’s.
Dedicated graphics cards- These are used within computers for the sole reason and speeding up graphical rendering and displaying it on screen, dedicated graphics card are called this because they have dedicated ram which is used solely by the GPU.
Integrated graphics solution- These types of GPU don’t have there own dedicated ram however they utilize a portion of the computers ram for them self.
Hybrid solutions- Hybrid solution competes with integrated graphic solution however it uses the computers ram however its own dedicated cache to speed processing has.
General purpose GPU- This type of GPU turns the power of a modern graphics accelerator's shader pipeline into general-purpose computing power.
2D And 3D
2D stands for two dimensional and 3D stands for three dimensional, 2D is best described as a plane drawing on a piece of paper which hasn’t been given the effect of 3D. Most computers and computer devices have 3D processors, 2D processors are out dated and are used within old games consoles such as the arcade generation.
2D image
3D is where an image or graphic is given the illusion of being 3D for example the image below.
3D image
As you can see there is a huge different in 2D and 3D therefore 3D is more processor heavy and needs a lot more power to be displayed correctly.
Pixels
Pixels are used within displays and graphical images, they are used to describe a physical point or area in one of these, by using co-ordinates these pixels are then displayed correctly on screens and printing correctly. Pixels have a huge colour pallet they can pcik from allowing for true colour images to be produced hwoever because thousands of pixels are used to create high quality graphics they use alot of space and procesing power.
Polygons are flat shapes which consist of straight lines and joined therefore making a closed circuit shape.
Nurbs
Nurbs non-uniform rational basis spline is a mathematical model/shape usually used within computer games to render curves and surfaces.
