Graphics card can be used interchangeably with the terms vide card, video adapter, graphics accelerator, and display adapter.

Aside from the motherboard interface and a printed circuit board as a base, modern graphics card contains the following components: A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a dedicated nvidia gx 580 processor which is optimized to accelerate graphics. It is designed to perform the fundamental floating-point calculations for rendering 3D graphics and drawing 2D pictures. One of the main characteristics of the GPU is its core clock frequency which translates a 3D image characterized by vertices and lines into a 2D image formed by pixels.

The Video BIOS, also known as the firmware, contains the basic program that controls the graphics card's operations and instructs the computer and software to interact with the card. The Video BIOS may contain pertinent information such as the Random Access Memory (RAM), memory timing, operating speeds and voltages of the graphics processor.

Video memory is used to store many data as well as the screen image, such as the Z-buffer. The Z-buffer manages the depth coordinate in 3D graphics, textures, vertex buffers, and compiled shader programs.

The memory capacity of a modern card ranges from 128MB to 4GB.