
Rather, the frame-buffer – also known as memory – is harnessed from the system, and chipsets with high-bandwidth memory support tend to offer a slightly better IGP experience. IGPs, too, tend not to ship with specific memory attached to them, as do discrete cards. That’s why IGP engineers sensibly pare-down the performance and transistor-count but try to keep the rudimentary features intact. An IGP-equipped motherboard may feature one or two display outputs but not all – not concurrently, at least.Īs IGPs are integrated into the motherboard’s silicon, where overall power-draw and cooling are important criterions, they cannot be as large and powerful as discrete cards. In its most primitive form, an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) is tasked with displaying text, images, and video in various resolutions and via multifarious outputs, including choices between D-Sub (analogue), DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. Out of the three companies that dominate the GPU market: Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA, only the latter two produce discrete, high-end GPUs, however. Modern IGPs tend to be based on technology that’s first debuted with more-powerful discrete add-in cards. This HEXUS.help guide focuses on integrated graphics and describes the options that are presently available to consumers. Integrated graphics refer to a GPU (graphics processing unit) that’s literally part of the motherboard, integrated at the silicon level, whereas discrete graphics, more powerful in nature, use a slot-in board to connect up to a motherboard, usually via a conduit that’s called PCI-Express. Graphics can take one of two forms: integrated or discrete. These components are common to both desktop and laptop computers.

Stating basics, every personal computer that’s currently sold requires some form of CPU, motherboard, memory, storage, and graphics that output to a display.
