When you are asked to think about what the main use of graphics cards is, the answer is likely fairly obvious: gaming. After all, it’s these games that require the processing power that GPUs can provide, to load the game’s graphics in high-definition quality as well as render assets and allow for gaming at smooth framerates of 60fps or more.
All of this takes substantial computing power, and in order to maintain high performance, a GPU is required to take the processing weight off of the CPU, as CPUs are not designed with rendering high-quality graphics specifically in mind and have to take care of the rest of the computer’s functionality.
While it is the most common use of a GPU, gaming is not the only computing process that requires considerable power to complete – they have hugely useful applications in a number of areas. Read on to find out more about the best uses for graphics cards outside of gaming.
Video Editing
One of the essential high-performance tasks that graphics cards help their users complete is video editing. Video has undergone major transformations in a previous couple of decades, evolving alongside our advancing technological capabilities – but this has come with some transitional issues, and this is where the GPU comes in.
Traditional video formats such as VHS operated in a raw file format, meaning that if a video had 30 frames per second, there are 1800 photos in a minute of footage – and when this is applied to high-definition picture quality, it creates gargantuan files that are impossible to move around or edit effectively.
GPUs such as those found at Lenovo are necessary to provide the processing power required to encode the video, which enables the file to be compressed without relinquishing any of the picture quality.
Cryptocurrency
One of the more common uses of graphics cards outside of gaming purposes is in the mining of cryptocurrency. In fact, with the explosion in the popularity of cryptocurrency in recent years, there has been a GPU shortage that has forced up their prices across the board, precisely because the GPUs are so essential for mining cryptocurrency effectively.
It’s all to do with the infrastructure used in processing cryptocurrency transactions, also known as the blockchain. Each block in the blockchain is an individual entry and takes a certain amount of computer processing power to produce. The more blocks there are in the blockchain, the more cryptocurrency that is produced, meaning high-performance devices are needed to complete the process quickly and efficiently.
For those mining cryptocurrencies, the coins that are mined are offset by the power consumption of your hardware, meaning it’s important to have the most efficient GPU possible.
3D Graphics Rendering
The final example of uses for graphics cards outside of gaming is in the creative arts, especially in terms of animation and 3D model rendering, which is an important factor in creating both video games and 3D animated sequences, whether they are movies, or short films or cartoon-style episodes.
3D animation has become ever-more technologically advanced in recent years, with animation appearing more life-like than ever before. This takes considerable computing power, and so professional studios invest heavily in GPUs to create the ultimate life-like landscapes within a virtual setting.
