GPUs have been around since the 1960s, but they have evolved significantly since then and have only recently become ubiquitous in personal computers.
In this article, we’ll discuss what are the advantages of GPU over CPU, so you can choose which one is right for your needs. And to better understand why GPUs are powerful, we’ll talk about what exactly GPUs do.
If you’re trying to choose between buying a graphics card and investing in an even more powerful CPU, you may be wondering what the advantages of GPU are over CPU.
One of the best reasons to get a graphics card is that it will improve your overall computer speed, meaning everything from system startup times to how quickly you can open and use programs will be dramatically faster.
Whether you’re using your computer for gaming or graphic design, you’ll see the benefits of having a graphics card in no time at all.
So let’s get started!
Processing Speed
GPUs are designed to speed up calculations by doing them in parallel; CPUs, on the other hand, are optimized for sequential processing.
Many calculations GPUs do at once might be done over and over again. This makes GPUs perfect for things like physics simulations and video editing, where you have to process each frame of a video.
GPUs can handle all those frames at once and can optimize that computation by finding redundancies in it (for example, if two frames have nearly identical sequences of numbers).
However, if you need to repeatedly add 1 + 1 over and over again, your computer will likely be faster with a CPU than with any graphics card.
But there’s one crucial catch: If you just need to keep track of one number and change it slightly every few thousand iterations, GPUs won’t help much more than an equally powerful CPU would.
In some cases, though, there’s no substitute for what they can accomplish and we may not even know yet what that is.
For example, high-performance computing applications are going through rapid changes as researchers look into how GPUs could solve problems like machine learning or DNA sequencing better or faster than ever before.
Memory
GPUs have more memory than CPUs, which means that they can store and process information much faster.
Compared to memory speeds on CPUs, memory on GPUs can be as much as 100 times faster, which makes them very useful in situations where speed is of critical importance like gaming.
As game graphics become more realistic and complex, processors with higher processing capabilities will be necessary to handle them.
If you want your game graphics to look like they were pulled straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster movie, it’s probably best to choose a device with a high-performance GPU over one that has plenty of processor power but lacks specialized graphical memory.
All in all, when used for tasks such as these, a GPU will prove itself to be far superior to a CPU because of its ability to retain data.
This retention leads directly to another advantage: versatility. Since GPUs are built specifically for tasks involving lots of mathematical computation and storage memory, they’re naturally more suited for handling massive amounts of data at once without losing any important details or quality.
What all of these factors add up to is faster performance overall; pretty much everything you do on your computer will run faster using a GPU rather than using only a CPU.
For example, uploading large files takes less time when using graphics processing units (GPUs), while streaming videos online and playing modern games becomes an even smoother experience thanks to lower latency rates among other things.
Tasks
CPUs and GPUs perform tasks differently. Whereas CPUs use their cores to execute multiple threads at once, GPUs use their cores to execute multiple graphics pipelines simultaneously. GPUs can process many sets of data quickly because they are designed to operate on vertices, whereas CPUs process data serially.
This difference explains why high-end graphics cards can outperform lower-end CPUs when it comes to computationally intensive tasks, such as rendering video and performing machine learning operations.
Also, GPUs boast higher clock speeds than CPUs, so they’re faster overall. Today’s graphics cards have billions of transistors while CPUs typically have hundreds of millions or less,
Though transistors aren’t all that matter in determining performance (clock speed and core counts also play a role), there’s little doubt that GPU power has increased over time while CPU power has remained stagnant.
Price
CPUs are much more inexpensive than GPUs, which can be more expensive than video cards. For example, you can purchase a GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB of GDDR5 RAM for $130.
You’d need to spend at least $600 to get an equivalent Intel i7 processor (Intel’s 8th gen i7), and then there’s also RAM and other components that would bring that price up even higher.
So if you’re on a budget, it might be smarter to choose your video card over your CPU. CPUs are also inherently slower in some ways even if they’re more powerful but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthwhile for gaming purposes,
It just means you may not want to use them unless you’re building a PC specifically designed for gaming performance and nothing else.