ELI5- Why are Graphics cards getting so big & power hungry when other electronics are getting smaller and use less power?

Question

In the past we put graphics cards in a PC now we put a PC in a space heater

In: 14

Answer 1

The Graphics Card did not truly get much bigger. What makes them big is the cooling. The Watercooled cards are actually still pretty small.
You have incredibly high number of transistors to do the calcuations and they need space. Eventually the production method decreases the size of a transistor like from 5nm to 3nm. Then you can have a lot more processing power on a smaller area.
But all that power needs energy, as our computing system is based on electricity. So you need more and more energy to do all these calcuations, but they are now so efficient they rarely use all the power that they could use.
Old cards used what they were offered. New cards will use as much as necessary and won’t go for 500W for calculating 1+1=2.