i hear terms as graphics drivers, opengl, directx etc … alot. even though i have looked them up i never understood what they really are. it would be great if you could give me a slight idea of how graphics work in computer or atleast point me to good resources.
In: Technology
Think about everything that happens in a manual transmission car when you shift gear. Lots of cogs and gears meshing and unmeshing, the clutch, all of that stuff. Would you know how to do it by hand? Probably not (and you couldn’t, but that’s another story). And even if you did, then you’d need to know every single car’s gearbox and engine.
So the manufacturers agreed that they’ll have a standard: a stick and a pedal.
That’s what drivers do: they provide a standard way for the operating system to control the chips on your video card. Each video card is differently designed under the hood and there is not default or simple way to tell it to make pixel xy red. So the chip makers also provide drivers that have standardised functions allowing for easier control of the graphics, so you don’t have to care about the inner workings of that particular chip.
A driver is the software that goes between the operating system and the hardware, no matter what the device is. Graphics card, mouse, sound card, whatever. Back in the days on Windows 98, USB flash drives weren’t really a thing. If you plugged one of those into a computer running Win98, it wouldn’t know what to do with it. After installing the drivers to support it (which might have just been included in an update to Win98 itself, I don’t remember), it would then be able to understand what the device is and how to read and write data to it.
For your graphics card specifically, your operating system has some default drivers that will make it functional on a basic level. You can boot up your computer, browse through your files, use some basic programs, etc. However, if you tried to play a game with them, it likely wouldn’t work well or at all. After installing the correct drivers, your operating system would then know how to use the graphics card, and you could run games using all of its functionality and capabilities.
You know how you have a CPU, with an Intel or AMD chip? It’s the main brain. It’s a general processor, as opposed to your GPU. That big expensive and wide card that mostly does floating point matrix manipulations. It’s good for 3d graphics.
The CPU needs to know how to use this tool though. It’s a computer, it needs very specific instructions. You can’t just say “hey, draw teapot”. And every GPU card is a little different (and every CPU needs different instructions). The instructions for how to use the GPU are capped graphic drivers.
Drivers are low level, they work with a kernel to control a graphics card.
OpenGL and DirectX are graphics libraries. These are included in applications that run with the OS.
Think about going to a burger joint. You aren’t operating the grill yourself. You put in the order, you can change some things like excluding items, but then the worker grills & assembles the burger to be enjoyed by you.
You putting in your order is using the libraries, the person running the grill would be the drivers.
Drivers in general tell the software (your operating system, or a game for example) how to talk to the hardware (the gpu, for example.)
It’s basically an instruction manual. The software knows what it wants to do. The gpu knows how to do it. The drivers translate what the software wants into what the hardware does.
All I could think of, was Arnold in kindergarten cop:
Who is your daddy, and what does he do?
Latest Answers