How do the graphics card, RAM, and processor all work together to determine performance of a PC?
In: Technology
generally speaking it has to do with the amaunt of data your platform can process and how fast can be elaborated .Different parts occupis a specific role in the elaboration of this data (cpu for OS ,gpu for gafic,sound card for sound for example ) .Since the different components of a pc works kinda independently one from another (super generalized ) there ist a specific unit of mesurament you can use too describe the performance of a pc ,it also depends on context of use (gaming,offic,crypto mining ,etc…) .If you want tow know how the different components works together i suggest to take a look at the von neumann scheme, witch is the architecture the most of the machine you come across evry day are base upon ( it can look complicated but it ist ).
Think of a computer as a restaurant.
The CPU is the head chef and sou chefs that manages all the tasks and sets up the menus. The faster or more experienced chefs will increase the performance but they are expensive. These chefs work harder and faster than any individual worker but they can’t operate an entire restaurant by themselves.
Most of the work goes to the line cooks which are the GPUs. While they are slower and less experienced, there are a lot more of them and they are cheaper to hire. They work in parallel to cook individual steps of a dish and put it together. If they are well trained and work faster, the restaurant can serve food faster. More of them can also increase sales if the restaurant can scale to allow more demand.
RAM is the kitchen space. You need tables to hold ingredients for processing food. More dishes means more tables. GPU RAM is the stoves and cooking areas. Food from the tables (RAM) need to be transfered to these areas for specific processing by the line chefs (GPU). If your kitchen is too small, you will end up with “too many cooks in the kitchen” and end up slowing the entire process.
Lastly, storage of food is the hard drive space. It takes some time to pull out the food and have it ready for the kitchen.
It’s like frozen yogurt and all the different toppings are components which affect the overall experience
CPU is its ability to do math. Everything a computer does is dictated by math, so this makes things faster. However you can’t get faster than almost instant (dictated by speed of electrons wizzing around inside) so if the CPU is able to go at that speed, other things may slow it down instead.
This is where we get to RAM. RAM (Random Access Memory) is the computers ability to remember things quickly. The CPU can’t remember things on its down, so if you want it to, say, remember the keys you are typing in your keyboard, it needs RAM to hold that information until the CPU needs it. If the RAM is smaller than is needed, we get issues. On solution is to temporary store information on your hard drive, that that is orders of manitude slower, so your CPU has to twiddle it non-existent thumbs and sit around and wait for the numbers it needs to get to it so it can do more math.
The Graphics card (GPU) is just another specialized CPU that has it’s own RAM built in with it. 3D graphics involved LOT of very complicated math done very quickly. The GPU does that math so the CPU doesn’t have to bother and it’s custom build to do that specific math very well. If it’s not good enough, you graphics will go behind. See the above two explanations for details, as either the GPU or it’s dedicated RAM will be at issue. You’re CPU can’t handle it’s own work and modern 3d graphics at once.
Things that do not require 3d graphics do not use the GPU at all, usually. Crytocurrency happens to use similar math to 3d graphics, so that’s why those are used for that. Hope that helps!
In laymans terms the graphics card is how good graphics are, the cpu is the main brain that does calculations quickly and the ram is the short term memory
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