High-performance dedicated graphics boards have a high
demand for electrical power and are largely employed in the
film industry, gaming, visualization and scientific research.
In this work, dedicated graphics cards are analyzed through
some of its characteristics: total memory in MB, memory clock
speed in Hz, core clock speed in Hz, shader clock speed in
Hz, number of shaders and the thermal design power in Watts.
Those characteristics are highly related to the amount of processing
power a video card is able to produce: high-end video
cards have faster processors, bigger memory and higher power
consumption than mid-level and low-end graphics boards.
Besides that, all of those characteristics can be easily retrieved
by software, avoiding the need of a physical inspection or a
deep knowledge of the graphics card specification.
The graphics card produces much more heat when running
demanding applications, a very common scenario in graphics
card usage due to it’s high profile computing nature. An
overheat event could cause the system to slow down, or even
a permanent damage.