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The display adapter in a computer system (often called a graphics card) is the hardware responsible for generating the images that appear on the system's visual display unit. Modern display adapters can take the form of a separate card or may be integrated into the motherboard. They are capable of operating at very high resolutions and displaying millions of colours. Even relatively modest display adapters can now handle computer animations, video playback, and 3D interactive games. Indeed, it is probably the computer gaming industry that has been the main driver behind the development of high-performance display adapter technology.

Display Adapter ~ Graphics Card

The display adapter shown above is one of the mid-range products currently available and has a price tag somewhere between £100 and £160. It has a gigabyte of RAM, and can produce output in a range of signal formats including VGA (at a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels), DVI (at a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels) and HDMI . When considering the purchase of a graphics card suitable for gaming or other graphically intensive applications, you will also need to take several other factors into account. The system motherboard must have an appropriate expansion slot for the card (usually a PCI Express slot), and you should check that there is enough space inside the case to physically accommodate the new card. Make sure that the power supply has both sufficient capacity and the right number and type of cable connections required. Operating system compatibility may also be an issue, since many cards require a minimum version number of DirectX in order to function correctly.

Since the arrival of SVGA at the end of the 1980s there have been a number of new display adapter standards, many based on IBM's XGA standard, that reflect the increasing demand for high resolution computer graphics and an ever more diverse range of user applications. The 4:3 and (to a lesser extent) 5:4 aspect ratios that were ubiquitous prior to about 2003 have in many instances been displaced by widescreen formats on both laptop computers and standalone LCD monitors. These widescreen formats are popular for a number of reasons, including the ability to display two pages of a document side by side on the screen, and for viewing widescreen movies. Some of the more significant standards are described graphic (note that all of these standards support a colour depth of 32 bits per pixel). The illustration gives an idea of how display resolutions have evolved.