Vendors Draw up a New Graphics-Hardware Approach

For the past five years, there have been two major approaches to providing graphics hardware in PCs, notebooks, game consoles, and workstations. The older technique has been to put graphics processing units (GPUs) on video cards. For example, Nvidia places its G92 GPU on its GeForce GTS 250 card, and AMD places its RV770 GPU on its ATI Radeon HD 4850 card. More recently, the most popular approach has been to incorporate integrated graphics processor (IGP) chipsets, such as Nvidia´s GeForce 9300 mGPU and Intel´s G45, into a system´s motherboard. IGP chipsets are designed to be less costly and less powerful than GPUs, and thus aren´t as suitable for high-end graphics applications such as games.