A Look Back At the First Computer Graphics Card Ever Invented
The function of (or graphics cards) is to generate and output images to a display. The images you see on your computer monitor are made of tiny dots called pixels. At most common resolution settings, a screen displays over a million pixels, and the computer has to decide what to do with them in order to create an image. To do this, it needs a translator or something to take binary data and turn it into a picture you can see; that translation takes place on the graphics card.
A graphics card’s job is complicated, but its basic principle is easy to understand. If a computer were a company, the video card is the art department. When people in the company want a piece of artwork, they send a request to the art department. The art department then creates the image and puts it on paper. A graphics card works the same way. The computer sends information about the image to the graphics card. The graphics card decides how to use the pixels on the screen to create the image and then sends that information to the monitor through a cable.
The very first personal computer video card was released with the first IBM PC in 1981. This MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter) could only work in text mode; it had a 4KB video memory and just one color. In 1987, Video Graphics Array (VGA) was introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers. Some corporations worked with that video card, improving its resolution and the number of colors it used and later was developed into the SVGA (Super VGA) standard, which reached 2 MB of video memory and a 256 color mode.
Creating an image out of binary data is a demanding process. To make a 3-D image, the graphics card first creates a wire frame out of straight lines. Then, it fills in the remaining pixels. It also adds lighting, texture and color. For fast-paced games, the computer has to go through this process about sixty times per second. Without a graphics card to perform the necessary calculations, the workload would be too much for the computer to handle.
The graphics card accomplishes this task using four main components: a motherboard connection for data and power, a processor to decide what to do with each pixel on the screen, Memory to hold information about each pixel and to temporarily store completed pictures and a monitor connection so you can see the final result
Graphics cards have come a long way since IBM introduced the first one in 1981. Called a Monochrome Display Adapter, that card provided text-only displays of green or white text on a black screen. Now, the minimum standard for new video cards is Video Graphics Array (VGA), which allows 256 colors. But with high-performance standards like Quantum Extended Graphics Array (QXGA), today’s video cards can display millions of colors at resolutions of up to 2040 x 1536 pixels.
