How Your PC Works Part 4:
How A Video Card and Monitor Works


   In this part of our series on how your PC works, we cover the video card and monitor.

If you're ever wondered what goes into the generation of those beautiful 3D graphics on your monitor, well - suffice to say it is a complex process.

The modern video card works closely with the PC monitor to generate the complex 3D graphics you see on display. This article will show you how these two critical pieces of equipment work together to produce this effect.

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A video card and monitor work together to display imagesicon



 1. From the Application to the Video Card

The first step in the generation of an image in a computer is within the software program. The program sends a request to the operation system (e.g. Windows XP) saying 'Hey, I want to draw this circle'. The operating system has a graphics driver which then interprets that request and transfers the instruction to the video card.
 

2. The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

Once the video card receives the instruction to draw that circle, it will dump the information into the graphics processing unit (or GPU) which lies on the video card. This GPU is responsible for turning the data into pixels which you see as various colored dots on the monitor.
 

3. From the Video Card to the Monitor

What happens then? Well, the pixels generated by the GPU don't get sent to the monitor immediately. Rather, they are sent to the video card's memory for storage. The video card has a special tool called the digital-to-analog converter (RAMDAC) that converts those digital pixels into the red, green, and blue analog signals that your monitor can use to display the images. It is the speed of this RAMDAC that determines the maximum resolution the video card can produce.
 

4. Display the Image!

Once the RAMDAC converts the pixels into analog signals, the monitor will display them and voila! A beautiful image on your screen.
 

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article has shown you how a video card works to display images on the computer monitor. You can now better appreciate those pictures on the monitor, can't you? Good luck and happy computing!

Related Articles

You may also wish to read the following related articles:

Top 5 performance video cards
Learn how to install an AGP graphics card
An short guide to PCI Express technology
A review of the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX graphics card
A guide to buying a computer video card for displaying graphics


 


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