This is a card that enhances your video card to perform faster operations when dealing with graphics and many colors. Most of the time, they handle 3D graphics and your video card handles 2D graphics.

A video adapter that also contains a microprocessor capable of delivering graphics to the display device independent of the CPU.  This frees the CPU for other tasks and enables specialized graphics processors to be used which increases overall performance.  First became necessary when Microsoft Windows was released and systems became more graphics intensive.

(n.) A hardware device dedicated to increasing the speed and performance of graphics. Graphics accelerators calculate pixel values, and write them into the frame buffer, freeing the CPU for other operations.

An expansion card used to do calculate pixel values separately from the computer's CPU.

a display board that speeds up graphics programs and adds enhanced, advanced graphics capabilities (such as video playback) to your computer system

a just a very fast graphics adapter card

a type of video adapter that contains its own microprocessor, enabling higher performance

A video card which is capable of handling some of the graphical pipeline in hardware. This is a step in between a dedicated video processor and a simple frame buffer device.

Printed circuit board containing VRAM and specialized circuitry to improve onscreen color accuracy and accelerate monitor performance. Mostly used by professionals.

A function to accelerate graphics processing.

A display device that includes circuitry to increase the rate at which images are drawn into the frame buffer is called an accelerator, or graphics accelerator. A graphics accelerator often includes memory and circuitry that permits enhanced functionality, such as display of additional colors, 3D images, and animation.

A graphics accelerator is a computer microelectronics component to which a computer program can offload the sending and refreshing of images to the display monitor and the computation of special effects common to 2-D and 3-D images. Graphics accelerators speed up the displaying of images on the monitor making it possible to achieve effects not otherwise possible - for example, the presentation of very large images or of interactive games in which images need to change quickly in response to user input. Many new personal computers are now sold with a graphics accelerator built in. The power of a graphics accelerator can be extended further if the personal computer is equipped with the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), a bus (data path) interface between the computer components involved in image display.

Basically, a graphics card which can (1) draw points, lines and polygons, using only the polygons' 3-dimensional vertices, and (2) map textures on polygons and/or shade polygons.

A type of video adapter that contains its own processor to boost performance levels. These processors are specialized for computing graphical transformations, so they achieve better results than the general-purpose CPU used by the computer

A type of video card that has an on-board processor that can substantially increase speed and boost graphical and video performance.

Video card with a dedicated processor to improve video quality and increase speed.

A video adapter that has its own processor to enhance performance. These accelerators are designed to handle high-end graphics activities, leaving the CPU to handle other system requirements. Accelerators typically use conventional DRAM, or a special type of VRAM (video RAM), to accommodate the video circuitry and the processor to access the memory simultaneously.

This is a highly misused and now almost meaningless term. For the purposes of this FAQ, a graphics accelerator is a coprocessor which is capable of specific graphics operation, independent of the main system CPU. See the section "How does a video accelerator work, and will one help me?"

Now, a lot of other terms and names can be given to these monsters of hardware (well not really monsters for the average person like you and I) such as: VGA card, graphics card or display card. In computers that use VGA cards (if it's not built into the motherboard) the monitor is plugged into it and controls all the graphics processing of your PC.

n. A video adapter that contains a graphics coprocessor. A graphics accelerator can update the video display much more quickly than the CPU can, and it frees the CPU for other tasks. A graphics accelerator is a necessity for modern software such as graphical user interfaces and multimedia applications. See also graphics coprocessor, video adapter.

High Performance Display adaptor for Graphical user interface