What is the difference between a GPU and a graphics card in a pc?

The graphics card is the hardware as a whole, while the GPU is a chip, part of the graphics card or an onboard similar, which stands for "Graphics Processing Unit".

Image: GPU on Graphics Card

Graphics card is the piece of hardware that is responsible of producing output to monitor. It has a connector(s) for monitor(s) and another connector to computer motherboard. Graphics card has its own memorymodules and most importantly the graphics processing unit that actually creates the display we see on monitor screen. Modern graphics cards also have power input connectors and their own cooling solutions.

GPU is short from Graphics Processing Unit. It is specially designed processor to most effectively process the displaying needs of a working computer.

GPU is an integral part of a graphics card, so that is the difference between these two.

Graphics Card is a complete board that gets binary data from the processor and outputs the result to the monitor in the form of pixels.Now there are lots of components in the Graphics card like

• GPU
• RAM (A dedicated RAM inside the graphics card used only by the card.Not to be confused with the system RAM)
• DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) that converts the digital data to analog format to be displayed in the monitor.

GPU(Graphics Processing Unit) is the dedicated processor inside Graphics Card that does all the heavylifting. It differs from the main processor in that its specially designed to perform the rendering task.