A modern graphics card is a circuit board with memory and a dedicated processor. The processor is designed specifically to handle the intense computational requirements of displaying graphics. Most of these graphics processors have special command sets for graphics manipulation built right into the chip. A graphics card takes the digital information that the computer produces and turns it into something human beings can see. On most computers, the graphics card converts digital information to analog information for display on the monitor; on laptops, the data remains digital because laptop displays are digital.High-end advanced graphics cards are usually bought by video-editing professionals and hard-core gamers. Graphics cards are known by many names, such as:

-Video cards
-Video boards
-Video display boards
-Graphics boards
-Graphics adapter cards
-Video adapter cards

Today's graphics cards are computing systems in their own right. But these cards started out as very simple devices.