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90-617: Matrox Graphics, Inc. is a producer of video card components and equipment for personal computers and workstations . Based in Dorval , Quebec , Canada, it was founded in 1976 by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić. The name is derived from "Ma" in Matić and "Tro" in Trottier. Matrox's first graphics card product was the ALT-256 for S-100 bus computers, released in 1978. The ALT-256 produced

180-863: A PresentPixmap operation performs a direct copy ( blit ) onto the front buffer or a swap of the entire back buffer with the front buffer is an internal detail of the Present extension implementation, instead of an explicit choice of the X client as it was in DRI2. Several open source DRI drivers have been written, including ones for ATI Mach64, ATI Rage128, ATI Radeon, 3dfx Voodoo3 through Voodoo5, Matrox G200 through G400, SiS 300-series, Intel i810 through i965, S3 Savage, VIA UniChrome graphics chipsets, and nouveau for Nvidia . Some graphics vendors have written closed-source DRI drivers, including ATI and PowerVR Kyro. The various versions of DRI have been implemented by various operating systems, amongst others by

270-401: A computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a display device such as a monitor . Graphics cards are sometimes called discrete or dedicated graphics cards to emphasize their distinction to an integrated graphics processor on the motherboard or the central processing unit (CPU). A graphics processing unit (GPU) that performs the necessary computations is

360-578: A graphics card comes in the form of a printed circuit board (expansion board) which is to be inserted into an expansion slot. Others may have dedicated enclosures, and they are connected to the computer via a docking station or a cable. These are known as external GPUs (eGPUs). Graphics cards are often preferred over integrated graphics for increased performance. Graphics cards, also known as video cards or graphics processing units (GPUs), have historically evolved alongside computer display standards to accommodate advancing technologies and user demands. In

450-430: A 17% fall from Q3 2012 levels. Shipments reached an annual total of 44 million in 2015. The sales of graphics cards have trended downward due to improvements in integrated graphics technologies; high-end, CPU-integrated graphics can provide competitive performance with low-end graphics cards. At the same time, graphics card sales have grown within the high-end segment, as manufacturers have shifted their focus to prioritize

540-456: A 256 by 256 pixel monochrome display using an 8 kilobyte (64 kilobit) frame buffer consisting of 16 TMS4027 DRAM chips (4 kilobits each). An expanded version followed, the ALT-512, both available for Intel SBC bus machines as well. Through the 1980s, Matrox's cards followed changes in the hardware side of the market, to Multibus and then the variety of PC standards. During the 1990s,

630-487: A GPU in the long term. Some graphics cards can be linked together to allow scaling graphics processing across multiple cards. This is done using either the PCIe bus on the motherboard or, more commonly, a data bridge. Usually, the cards must be of the same model to be linked, and most low end cards are not able to be linked in this way. AMD and Nvidia both have proprietary scaling methods, CrossFireX for AMD, and SLI (since

720-483: A RAMDAC, but they reconvert the analog signal back to digital before they can display it, with the unavoidable loss of quality stemming from this digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion. With the VGA standard being phased out in favor of digital formats, RAMDACs have started to disappear from graphics cards. The most common connection systems between the graphics card and the computer display are: Also known as D-sub , VGA

810-592: A built-in computer for machine vision applications. 2016, Matrox introduced the C-series of graphics cards based on GPUs from AMD. Cards are C420 LP, C680 and C900. On September 6, 2019, the company announced that its co-founder Lorne Trottier had acquired 100% ownership of the Matrox group of companies, including its three divisions—Matrox Imaging, Matrox Graphics, and Matrox Video. On June 6, 2022, Zebra Technologies announced they had completed their acquisition of

900-509: A computer display that uses analog inputs such as cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays. The RAMDAC is a kind of RAM chip that regulates the functioning of the graphics card. Depending on the number of bits used and the RAMDAC-data-transfer rate, the converter will be able to support different computer-display refresh rates. With CRT displays, it is best to work over 75  Hz and never under 60 Hz, to minimize flicker. (This

990-446: A greater throughput of the same functionality as HDMI , it is expected to complement the interface, not replace it. Chronologically, connection systems between graphics card and motherboard were, mainly: The following table is a comparison between features of some interfaces listed above. Direct Rendering Infrastructure DRI implementation is scattered through the X Server and its associated client libraries, Mesa 3D and

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1080-511: A large motherboard with a proper configuration. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 590 graphics card can be configured in a four-card configuration. As stated above, users will want to stick to cards with the same performances for optimal use. Motherboards including ASUS Maximus 3 Extreme and Gigabyte GA EX58 Extreme are certified to work with this configuration. A large power supply is necessary to run the cards in SLI or CrossFireX. Power demands must be known before

1170-463: A large number of monitors attached to the same PC is required. In recent years they have held no more than a 3–5% share of the total video card market. Matrox is now divided into three divisions: Matrox Graphics, Matrox Video, and Matrox Imaging. Matrox Graphics is the primary consumer and end-user brand, while Matrox Video markets digital video editing solutions, and Matrox Imaging sells high-end video capture systems and "smart cameras", video cameras with

1260-410: A major surge in price, with many retailers having stock shortages due to the significant demand among this market. Graphics card companies released mining-specific cards designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week , and without video output ports. The graphics card industry took a setback due to the 2020–21 chip shortage . A modern graphics card consists of a printed circuit board on which

1350-422: A modern graphics card is also a computer unto itself. A heat sink is mounted on most modern graphics cards. A heat sink spreads out the heat produced by the graphics processing unit evenly throughout the heat sink and unit itself. The heat sink commonly has a fan mounted to cool the heat sink and the graphics processing unit. Not all cards have heat sinks, for example, some cards are liquid-cooled and instead have

1440-453: A pixmap (in "X Server space") from a GEM buffer object (in "DRI client space"), and the other to do the reverse and get a GEM buffer object from an X pixmap. In these DRI3 operations GEM buffer objects are passed as DMA-BUF file descriptors instead of GEM names. DRI3 also provides a way to share synchronization objects between the DRI client and the X Server, allowing both a serialized access to

1530-509: A pixmap by any means. For example, most existing non- GL based GTK+ and Qt applications used to do double buffered pixmap rendering using XRender . The Present extension can also be used by these applications to achieve efficient and non-tearing screen updates. This is the reason why Present was developed as a separate standalone extension instead of being part of DRI3. Apart from allowing non-GL X clients to synchronize with VBLANK, Present brings other advantages. DRI3 graphics performance

1620-570: A proper supply is installed. For the four card configuration, a 1000+ watt supply is needed. With any relatively powerful graphics card, thermal management cannot be ignored. Graphics cards require well-vented chassis and good thermal solutions. Air or water cooling are usually required, though low end GPUs can use passive cooling. Larger configurations use water solutions or immersion cooling to achieve proper performance without thermal throttling. SLI and Crossfire have become increasingly uncommon as most games do not fully utilize multiple GPUs, due to

1710-462: A proposal by Kristian Høgsberg . Høgsberg himself wrote the new DRI2 extension and the modifications to Mesa and GLX . In March 2008 DRI2 was mostly done, but it couldn't make into X.Org Server version 1.5 and had to wait until version 1.6 from February 2009. The DRI2 extension was officially included in the X11R7.5 release of October 2009. The first public version of the DRI2 protocol (2.0)

1800-421: A water block; additionally, cards from the 1980s and early 1990s did not produce much heat, and did not require heat sinks. Most modern graphics cards need proper thermal solutions. They can be water-cooled or through heat sinks with additional connected heat pipes usually made of copper for the best thermal transfer. The video BIOS or firmware contains a minimal program for the initial set up and control of

1890-414: Is a compact audio/video interface for transferring uncompressed video data and compressed/uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant device ("the source device") to a compatible digital audio device, computer monitor , video projector , or digital television . HDMI is a digital replacement for existing analog video standards. HDMI supports copy protection through HDCP . DisplayPort

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1980-668: Is a digital display interface developed by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). The interface is primarily used to connect a video source to a display device such as a computer monitor , though it can also be used to transmit audio, USB, and other forms of data. The VESA specification is royalty-free . VESA designed it to replace VGA , DVI , and LVDS . Backward compatibility to VGA and DVI by using adapter dongles enables consumers to use DisplayPort fitted video sources without replacing existing display devices. Although DisplayPort has

2070-430: Is an analog-based standard adopted in the late 1980s designed for CRT displays, also called VGA connector . Today, the VGA analog interface is used for high definition video resolutions including 1080p and higher. Some problems of this standard are electrical noise , image distortion and sampling error in evaluating pixels. While the VGA transmission bandwidth is high enough to support even higher resolution playback,

2160-420: Is better because Present is more efficient than DRI2 in swapping buffers. A number of OpenGL extensions that weren't available with DRI2 are now supported based on new features provided by Present. Present provides two main operations to X clients: update a region of a window using part of or all the contents of a pixmap ( PresentPixmap ) and set the type of presentation events related to a certain window that

2250-486: Is limited to supplying 75 watts. Modern graphics cards with a power consumption of over 75 watts usually include a combination of six-pin (75 W) or eight-pin (150 W) sockets that connect directly to the power supply. Providing adequate cooling becomes a challenge in such computers. Computers with multiple graphics cards may require power supplies over 750 watts. Heat extraction becomes a major design consideration for computers with two or more high-end graphics cards. As of

2340-601: Is not a problem with LCD displays, as they have little to no flicker. ) Due to the growing popularity of digital computer displays and the integration of the RAMDAC onto the GPU die, it has mostly disappeared as a discrete component. All current LCD/plasma monitors and TVs and projectors with only digital connections work in the digital domain and do not require a RAMDAC for those connections. There are displays that feature analog inputs ( VGA , component, SCART , etc.) only . These require

2430-494: Is not enabled on the Blu-ray disc. Digital Visual Interface is a digital-based standard designed for displays such as flat-panel displays ( LCDs , plasma screens, wide high-definition television displays) and video projectors. There were also some rare high-end CRT monitors that use DVI. It avoids image distortion and electrical noise, corresponding each pixel from the computer to a display pixel, using its native resolution . It

2520-504: Is termed a duopoly . AMD and Nvidia also build and sell graphics cards, which are termed graphics add-in-boards (AIBs) in the industry. (See Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units and Comparison of AMD graphics processing units .) In addition to marketing their own graphics cards, AMD and Nvidia sell their GPUs to authorized AIB suppliers, which AMD and Nvidia refer to as "partners". The fact that Nvidia and AMD compete directly with their customer/partners complicates relationships in

2610-646: Is worth noting that most manufacturers include a DVI- I connector, allowing (via simple adapter) standard RGB signal output to an old CRT or LCD monitor with VGA input. These connectors are included to allow connection with televisions , DVD players , video recorders and video game consoles . They often come in two 10-pin mini-DIN connector variations, and the VIVO splitter cable generally comes with either 4 connectors ( S-Video in and out plus composite video in and out), or 6 connectors (S-Video in and out, component YP B P R out and composite in and out). HDMI

2700-472: The DRI2CopyRegion and DRI2SwapBuffers requests. DRI2CopyRegion can be used to do a copy between the fake front buffer and the real front buffer, but it doesn't provide any synchronization with the vertical blanking interval, so it can cause tearing . DRI2SwapBuffers , on the other hand, performs a VBLANK-synchronized swap between back and front buffer, if it's supported and both buffers have

2790-527: The Direct Rendering Manager kernel subsystem. All of its source code is open-source software . In the classic X Window System architecture the X Server is the only process with exclusive access to the graphics hardware , and therefore the one which does the actual rendering on the framebuffer . All that X clients do is communicate with the X Server to dispatch rendering commands. Those commands are hardware independent, meaning that

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2880-553: The GEM API that allows two processes accessing a DRM device to refer to the same buffer— for passing around "references" to those buffers through the X11 protocol . The reason why the X Server is in charge of the buffer allocation of the render buffers of a window is that the GLX extension allows for multiple X clients to do OpenGL rendering cooperatively in the same window. This way,

2970-474: The Linux kernel , FreeBSD , NetBSD , OpenBSD , and OpenSolaris . The project was started by Jens Owen and Kevin E. Martin from Precision Insight (funded by Silicon Graphics and Red Hat ). It was first made widely available as part of XFree86 4.0 and is now part of the X.Org Server . It is currently maintained by the free software community . Work on DRI2 started at the 2007 X Developers' Summit from

3060-606: The Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series, Ampere architecture , a custom flashed RTX 3090 named "Hall of Fame" has been recorded to reach a peak power draw as high as 630 watts. A standard RTX 3090 can peak at up to 450 watts. The RTX 3080 can reach up to 350 watts, while a 3070 can reach a similar, if not slightly lower peak power draw. Ampere cards of the Founders Edition variant feature a "dual axial flow through" cooler design, which includes fans above and below

3150-451: The Turing generation, superseded by NVLink ) for Nvidia. Cards from different chip-set manufacturers or architectures cannot be used together for multi-card scaling. If graphics cards have different sizes of memory, the lowest value will be used, with the higher values disregarded. Currently, scaling on consumer-grade cards can be done using up to four cards. The use of four cards requires

3240-482: The X11 protocol provides an API that abstracts the graphics device so the X clients don't need to know or worry about the specifics of the underlying hardware. Any hardware-specific code lives inside the Device Dependent X , the part of the X Server that manages each type of video card or graphics adapter and which is also often called the video or graphics driver . The rise of 3D rendering has shown

3330-510: The "DRI3" extension and the "Present" extension. The main purpose of the DRI3 extension is to implement the mechanism to share direct rendered buffers between DRI clients and the X Server. DRI clients allocate and use GEM buffers objects as rendering targets, while the X Server represents these render buffers using a type of X11 object called "pixmap". DRI3 provides two operations, DRI3PixmapFromBuffer and DRI3BufferFromPixmap , one to create

3420-486: The CPU and system RAM, therefore the overall performance for a computer could improve in addition to increased performance in graphics processing. Such improvements to performance can be seen in video gaming , 3D animation , and video editing . Both AMD and Intel have introduced CPUs and motherboard chipsets which support the integration of a GPU into the same die as the CPU. AMD advertises CPUs with integrated graphics under

3510-514: The DIMM or PCIE slots. This can be fixed with a larger computer case such as mid-tower or full tower. Full towers are usually able to fit larger motherboards in sizes like ATX and micro ATX. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, some high-end graphics card models have become so heavy that it is possible for them to sag downwards after installing without proper support, which is why many manufacturers provide additional support brackets. GPU sag can damage

3600-413: The DRI clients and the X Server. All of them rendered directly onto the back buffer, that was swapped with the front buffer at vertical blanking interval time. In order to render to the back buffer, a DRI process should ensure that the rendering was clipped to the area reserved for its window . The synchronization with the X Server was done through signals and a shared memory buffer called

3690-513: The Direct Rendering Infrastructure had to be redesigned so that X clients could also support redirection to "offscreen pixmaps" while doing direct rendering. Regular X clients already respected the redirection to a separate pixmap provided by the X Server as a render target —the so-called offscreen pixmap—, but DRI clients continued to do the rendering directly into the shared backbuffer, effectively bypassing

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3780-508: The GEM names of the new buffers. The DRI2 extension provides other core operations for the DRI clients, such as finding out which DRM device and driver they should use ( DRI2Connect ) or getting authenticated by the X Server in order to be able to use the rendering and buffer facilities of the DRM device ( DRI2Authenticate ). The presentation of the rendered buffers in the screen is performed using

3870-544: The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founder's Edition averaged 300 watts of power consumption. While CPU and power supply manufacturers have recently aimed toward higher efficiency, power demands of graphics cards continued to rise, with the largest power consumption of any individual part in a computer. Although power supplies have also increased their power output, the bottleneck occurs in the PCI-Express connection, which

3960-670: The Macintosh graphical user interface, allowed for the rapid rendering of bitmapped graphics, fonts, and shapes, and the introduction of such hardware-based enhancements signaled an era of specialized graphics processing in consumer machines. The evolution of graphics processing took a major leap forward in the mid-1990s with 3dfx Interactive 's introduction of the Voodoo series , one of the earliest consumer-facing GPUs that supported 3D acceleration. These cards, however, were dedicated entirely to 3D processing and lacked 2D support, necessitating

4050-698: The Matrox Imaging division. 2023 Matrox introduced the LUMA series of graphics cards based on Intel Arc GPUs from Intel. To support Unix and Linux, Matrox has released only binary drivers for most of their product line and one partially free and open-source driver for the G550 card which comes with a binary blob to enable some additional functionality. These drivers were tested and are allegedly supported for quite old distributions. They do not work on newer Linux kernels and X.Org Server versions. In addition to

4140-644: The Matrox Millennium series of cards attracted buyers willing to pay for a higher quality and sharper display. In 1994, Matrox introduced the Matrox Impression, an add-on card that worked in conjunction with a 2d card to provide 3D acceleration. The Impression was aimed primarily at the CAD market. In October of 1995, Matrox released the Millennium, its most venerated 2d card. A later version of

4230-531: The Millennium included features similar to the Impression but by this time the series was lagging behind emerging vendors like 3dfx Interactive . Matrox made several attempts to increase its share of the market for 3D-capable cards. The Matrox Mystique , released in 1996, was the company's first attempt to make a card with good gaming performance and with pricing suitable for that market. The product had good 2D and 3D performance but produced poor 3D images with

4320-961: The RIVA 128 was one of the first consumer-facing GPUs to integrate both 3D and 2D processing units on a single chip. This innovation simplified the hardware requirements for end-users, as they no longer needed separate cards for 2D and 3D rendering, thus paving the way for the widespread adoption of more powerful and versatile GPUs in personal computers. In contemporary times, the majority of graphics cards are built using chips sourced from two dominant manufacturers: AMD and Nvidia . These modern graphics cards are multifunctional and support various tasks beyond rendering 3D images for gaming. They also provide 2D graphics processing, video decoding , TV output , and multi-monitor setups . Additionally, many graphics cards now have integrated sound capabilities, allowing them to transmit audio alongside video output to connected TVs or monitors with built-in speakers, further enhancing

4410-455: The SAREA. The access to the DRM device was exclusive, so any DRI client had to lock it at the beginning of a rendering operation. Other users of the device —including the X Server— were blocked in the meantime, and they had to wait until the lock was released at the end of the current rendering operation, even if it wouldn't be any conflict between both operations. Another drawback

4500-426: The X Server for a long time. In DRI2, instead of a single shared (back) buffer, every DRI client gets its own private back buffer —along with their associated depth and stencil buffers— to render its window content using the hardware acceleration . The DRI client then swaps it with a false " front buffer ", which is used by the compositing window manager as one of the sources to compose (build)

4590-412: The X Server manages the whole lifecycle of the render buffers along the entire rendering process and knows when it can safely recycle or discard them. When a window resize is performed, the X Server is also responsible for allocating new render buffers matching the new window size, and notifying the change to the DRI client(s) rendering into the window using an InvalidateBuffers event, so they would retrieve

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4680-553: The card to dissipate as much heat as possible towards the rear of the computer case. A similar design was used by the Sapphire Radeon RX Vega 56 Pulse graphics card. Graphics cards for desktop computers have different size profiles, which allows graphics cards to be added to smaller-sized computers. Some graphics cards are not of the usual size, and are named as "low profile". Graphics card profiles are based on height only, with low-profile cards taking up less than

4770-502: The client wants to be notified about ( PresentSelectInput ). There are three presentation events about which a window can notify an X client: when an ongoing presentation operation —normally from a call to PresentPixmap — has been completed ( PresentCompleteNotify ), when a pixmap used by a PresentPixmap operation is ready to be reused ( PresentIdleNotify ) and when the window configuration —mostly window size— changes ( PresentConfigureNotify ). Whether

4860-404: The components are mounted. These include: A graphics processing unit ( GPU ), also occasionally called visual processing unit ( VPU ), is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display. Because of the large degree of programmable computational complexity for such a task,

4950-428: The compositing window manager. The ultimate solution was to change the way DRI handled the render buffers, which led to a completely different DRI extension with a new set of operations, and also major changes in the Direct Rendering Manager . The new extension was named "DRI2", although it's not a later version but a different extension not even compatible with the original DRI —in fact both have coexisted within

5040-474: The damaged parts of a window as another performance optimization. The DRI3 extension no longer needs to be modified to support new particular buffer formats, since they are now handled directly between the DRI client driver and the DRM kernel driver. The use of file descriptors, on the other hand, allows the kernel to perform a safe cleanup of any unused GEM buffer object —one with no reference to it. Technically, DRI3 consists of two different extensions,

5130-476: The development of modern graphical capabilities. In the late 1980s, advancements in personal computing led companies like Radius to develop specialized graphics cards for the Apple Macintosh II . These cards were unique in that they incorporated discrete 2D QuickDraw capabilities, enhancing the graphical output of Macintosh computers by accelerating 2D graphics rendering. QuickDraw, a core part of

5220-455: The fact that most users cannot afford them. Multiple GPUs are still used on supercomputers (like in Summit ), on workstations to accelerate video and 3D rendering, visual effects , for simulations, and for training artificial intelligence. A graphics driver usually supports one or multiple cards by the same vendor and has to be written for a specific operating system. Additionally,

5310-646: The final screen back buffer to be swapped at the VBLANK interval with the real front buffer. To handle all these new buffers, the Direct Rendering Manager had to incorporate new functionality, specifically a graphics memory manager . DRI2 was initially developed using the experimental TTM memory manager, but it was later rewritten to use GEM after it was chosen as the definitive DRM memory manager. The new DRI2 internal buffer management model also solved two major performance bottlenecks present in

5400-678: The first time, but was released shortly before a new generation of cards from Nvidia and ATI which completely outperformed it. Later versions in the Matrox G400 series were never able to regain the crown, and despite huge claims for the Matrox Parhelia , their performance continued to be quickly outpaced by the major players. Since then, Matrox has continued to shift the focus of its card designs towards specialized, niche markets, moving more deeply into enterprise, industrial, and government applications. This includes solutions for when

5490-439: The gaming and enthusiast market. Beyond the gaming and multimedia segments, graphics cards have been increasingly used for general-purpose computing , such as big data processing. The growth of cryptocurrency has placed a severely high demand on high-end graphics cards, especially in large quantities, due to their advantages in the process of cryptocurrency mining. In January 2018, mid- to high-end graphics cards experienced

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5580-552: The graphics card simultaneously to feed separate displays. The main advantages of integrated graphics are: a low cost, compactness, simplicity, and low energy consumption. Integrated graphics often have less performance than a graphics card because the graphics processing unit inside integrated graphics needs to share system resources with the CPU. On the other hand, a graphics card has a separate random access memory (RAM), cooling system, and dedicated power regulators. A graphics card can offload work and reduce memory-bus-contention from

5670-484: The graphics card. It may contain information on the memory and memory timing, operating speeds and voltages of the graphics processor, and other details which can sometimes be changed. Modern Video BIOSes do not support full functionalities of graphics cards; they are only sufficient to identify and initialize the card to display one of a few frame buffer or text display modes. It does not support YUV to RGB translation, video scaling, pixel copying, compositing or any of

5760-464: The height of a PCIe slot, some can be as low as "half-height". Length and thickness can vary greatly, with high-end cards usually occupying two or three expansion slots, and with modern high-end graphics cards such as the RTX 4090 exceeding 300mm in length. A lower profile card is preferred when trying to fit multiple cards or if graphics cards run into clearance issues with other motherboard components like

5850-798: The industry. AMD and Intel being direct competitors in the CPU industry is also noteworthy, since AMD-based graphics cards may be used in computers with Intel CPUs. Intel's integrated graphics may weaken AMD, in which the latter derives a significant portion of its revenue from its APUs . As of the second quarter of 2013, there were 52 AIB suppliers. These AIB suppliers may market graphics cards under their own brands, produce graphics cards for private label brands, or produce graphics cards for computer manufacturers. Some AIB suppliers such as MSI build both AMD-based and Nvidia-based graphics cards. Others, such as EVGA , build only Nvidia-based graphics cards, while XFX , now builds only AMD-based graphics cards. Several AIB suppliers are also motherboard suppliers. Most of

5940-427: The lack of synchronization of buffer sizes between client and server that plagued window resizing in DRI2. A better performance is also achieved because now DRI3 clients save the extra round trip waiting for the X Server to send the render buffers. DRI3 clients, and especially compositor window managers, can take advantage of keeping older buffers of previous frames and reusing them as the basis on which to render only

6030-459: The largest AIB suppliers are based in Taiwan and they include ASUS , MSI , GIGABYTE , and Palit . Hong Kong–based AIB manufacturers include Sapphire and Zotac . Sapphire and Zotac also sell graphics cards exclusively for AMD and Nvidia GPUs respectively. Graphics card shipments peaked at a total of 114 million in 1999. By contrast, they totaled 14.5 million units in the third quarter of 2013,

6120-650: The latest graphics cards a new IPC-less architecture was required. X clients should have direct access to graphics hardware rather than relying on another process to do so, saving all the IPC overhead. This approach is called "direct rendering" as opposed to the "indirect rendering" provided by the classical X architecture. The Direct Rendering Infrastructure was initially developed to allow any X client to perform 3D rendering using this "direct rendering" approach. Nothing prevents DRI from being used to implement accelerated 2D direct rendering within an X client. Simply no one has had

6210-421: The limits of this architecture. 3D graphics applications tend to produce large amounts of commands and data, all of which must be dispatched to the X Server for rendering. As the amount of inter-process communication (IPC) between the X client and X Server increased, the 3D rendering performance suffered to the point that X driver developers concluded that in order to take advantage of 3D hardware capabilities of

6300-582: The main component in a graphics card, but the acronym "GPU" is sometimes also used to erroneously refer to the graphics card as a whole. Most graphics cards are not limited to simple display output. The graphics processing unit can be used for additional processing, which reduces the load from the CPU. Additionally, computing platforms such as OpenCL and CUDA allow using graphics cards for general-purpose computing . Applications of general-purpose computing on graphics cards include AI training , cryptocurrency mining , and molecular simulation . Usually,

6390-409: The multimedia experience. Within the graphics industry, these products are often referred to as graphics add-in boards (AIBs). The term "AIB" emphasizes the modular nature of these components, as they are typically added to a computer's motherboard to enhance its graphical capabilities. The evolution from the early days of separate 2D and 3D cards to today’s integrated and multifunctional GPUs reflects

6480-496: The multitude of other 2D and 3D features of the graphics card, which must be accessed by software drivers. The memory capacity of most modern graphics cards ranges from 2 to 24 GB . But with up to 32 GB as of the last 2010s, the applications for graphics use are becoming more powerful and widespread. Since video memory needs to be accessed by the GPU and the display circuitry, it often uses special high-speed or multi-port memory, such as VRAM , WRAM , SGRAM , etc. Around 2003,

6570-417: The need to do so because the 2D indirect rendering performance was good enough. The basic architecture of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure involves three main components: In the original DRI architecture, due to the memory size of video cards at that time, there was a single instance of the screen front buffer and back buffer (also of the ancillary depth buffer and stencil buffer ), shared by all

6660-426: The ongoing technological advancements and the increasing demand for high-quality visual and multimedia experiences in computing. As an alternative to the use of a graphics card, video hardware can be integrated into the motherboard , CPU , or a system-on-chip as integrated graphics. Motherboard-based implementations are sometimes called "on-board video". Some motherboards support using both integrated graphics and

6750-511: The operating system or an extra software package may provide certain programming APIs for applications to perform 3D rendering. Some GPUs are designed with specific usage in mind: As of 2016, the primary suppliers of the GPUs (graphics chips or chipsets) used in graphics cards are AMD and Nvidia. In the third quarter of 2013, AMD had a 35.5% market share while Nvidia had 64.5%, according to Jon Peddie Research. In economics, this industry structure

6840-470: The original DRI implementation: In DRI2, the allocation of the private offscreen buffers (back buffer, fake front buffer, depth buffer, stencil buffer, ...) for a window is done by the X Server itself. DRI clients retrieve those buffers to do the rendering into the window by calling operations such as DRI2GetBuffers and DRI2GetBuffersWithFormat available in the DRI2 extension. Internally, DRI2 uses GEM names —a type of global handle provided by

6930-407: The picture quality can degrade depending on cable quality and length. The extent of quality difference depends on the individual's eyesight and the display; when using a DVI or HDMI connection, especially on larger sized LCD/LED monitors or TVs, quality degradation, if present, is prominently visible. Blu-ray playback at 1080p is possible via the VGA analog interface, if Image Constraint Token (ICT)

7020-497: The proprietary drivers provided by Matrox, the DRI community has provided drivers under the GPL license for many more of the devices. Similar companies Graphics card Display via one of: A graphics card (also called a video card , display card , graphics accelerator , graphics adapter , VGA card/VGA , video adapter , display adapter , or colloquially GPU ) is

7110-406: The realm of IBM PC compatibles, the early standards included Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) , Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) , Hercules Graphics Card , Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) , and Video Graphics Array (VGA) . Each of these standards represented a step forward in the ability of computers to display more colors, higher resolutions, and richer graphical interfaces, laying the foundation for

7200-668: The result that it was derided in reviews, being compared unfavorably with the Voodoo1 and even being nicknamed the "Matrox Mystake". Another attempt was the Matrox G100 and G200 . The G200 was sold as two models, the Millennium G200 was a higher-end version typically equipped with 8 MB SGRAM memory, while the Mystique G200 used slower SDRAM memory but added a TV-out port. The G200 offered competent 3D performance for

7290-413: The same size, or a copy ( blit ) otherwise. Although DRI2 was a significant improvement over the original DRI, the new extension also introduced some new issues. In 2013, a third iteration of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure known as DRI3 was developed in order to fix those issues. The main differences of DRI3 compared to DRI2 are: Buffer allocation on the client side breaks GLX assumptions in

7380-516: The screen, but relies on another extension, the Present extension, to do so. Present is so named because its main task is to "present" buffers on the screen, meaning that it handles the update of the framebuffer using the contents of the rendered buffers delivered by client applications. Screen updates have to be done at the proper time, normally during the VBLANK interval in order to avoid display artifacts such as tearing . Present also handles

7470-419: The sense that it's no longer possible for multiple GLX applications to render cooperatively in the same window. On the plus side, the fact that the DRI client is in charge of its own buffers throughout their lifetime brings many advantages. For example, it is easy for the DRI3 client to ensure that the size of the render buffers always match the current size of the window, and thereby eliminate the artifacts due to

7560-401: The shared buffer. Unlike DRI2, the initial DRI3Open operation —the first every DRI client must request to know which DRM device to use— returns an already open file descriptor to the device node instead of the device node filename, with any required authentication procedure already performed in advance by the X Server. DRI3 provides no mechanism to show the rendered buffers on

7650-532: The synchronization of screen updates to the VBLANK interval. It also keeps the X client informed about the instant each buffer is really shown on the screen using events, so the client can synchronize its rendering process with the current screen refresh rate. Present accepts any X pixmap as the source for a screen update. Since pixmaps are standard X objects, Present can be used not only by DRI3 clients performing direct rendering, but also by any X client rendering on

7740-488: The trademark Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), while Intel brands similar technology under " Intel Graphics Technology ". As the processing power of graphics cards increased, so did their demand for electrical power. Current high-performance graphics cards tend to consume large amounts of power. For example, the thermal design power (TDP) for the GeForce Titan RTX is 280 watts . When tested with video games,

7830-525: The use of a separate 2D graphics card in tandem. The Voodoo's architecture marked a major shift in graphical computing by offloading the demanding task of 3D rendering from the CPU to the GPU, significantly improving gaming performance and graphical realism. The development of fully integrated GPUs that could handle both 2D and 3D rendering came with the introduction of the NVIDIA RIVA 128 . Released in 1997,

7920-674: The video memory was typically based on DDR technology. During and after that year, manufacturers moved towards DDR2 , GDDR3 , GDDR4 , GDDR5 , GDDR5X , and GDDR6 . The effective memory clock rate in modern cards is generally between 2 and 15  GHz . Video memory may be used for storing other data as well as the screen image, such as the Z-buffer , which manages the depth coordinates in 3D graphics , as well as textures , vertex buffers , and compiled shader programs . The RAMDAC , or random-access-memory digital-to-analog converter, converts digital signals to analog signals for use by

8010-479: Was announced in April 2009. Since then there have been several revisions, the most recent being version 2.8 from July 2012. Due to several limitations of DRI2, a new extension called DRI-Next was proposed by Keith Packard and Emma Anholt at the X.Org Developer's Conference 2012. The extension was proposed again as DRI3000 at Linux.conf.au 2013. DRI3 and Present extensions were developed during 2013 and merged into

8100-422: Was that operations didn't retain memory allocations after the current DRI process released its lock on the device, so any data uploaded to the graphics memory such as textures were lost for upcoming operations, causing a significant impact on graphics performance. Nowadays DRI1 is considered completely obsolete and must not be used. Due to the increasing popularity of compositing window managers like Compiz ,

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