eli5: What does a GPU do when you play a game.
In: Technology
A GPU is a Graphics Processing Unit. It processes the graphics for the game. It’s a chip that’s specialized for doing lots of relatively basic stuff, which is good for graphics processing. It puts all the pixels on the screen.
Meanwhile the Central Processing Unit processes everything else, like where the monsters are going and how many health points you have.
The CPU tells the GPU “display a monster at these coordinates: 123, 456” and then the GPU actually translates that instruction into pixels.
Some old game consoles used to have a Sound Processing Unit, but these days the CPU is fast enough to calculate the sound as well, so it doesn’t need a separate processing unit.
Not all games use the GPU. The CPU can process anything, even graphics. The GPU just processes graphics more quickly and lets the CPU do other stuff in the meantime.
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