What Is a GPU, and How Is It Different from a Graphics Card?
You might be surprised to find out that calling your graphics card a GPU would be technically incorrect. This little fact will not stop people from continuing this practice but it is a fun trivia fact that you can use to impress your friends and assert gamer dominance.
GPU vs Graphics Card
The GPU, otherwise known as the Graphics Processing Unit, is the brain of your graphics card that is used to perform complex graphics operations and is crucial for gaming. All of the fancy graphics you see in games are all being processed by this tiny die composed of thousands of small cores.
The graphics card on the other hand is the entirety of the component and not just the GPU. A graphics card is composed of multiple other hardware pieces like the PCB itself, the VRAM, the power connectors, the PCIe interface, the heatsink, the cooling fans, etc.
All of these components can be seen when you attempt to re-paste your GPU or when modding your card. The GPU is also the main part of your graphics card that produces heat, and depending on how powerful the chip is, you might need a huge heatsink and fast fans to keep it under operating temperatures.
To see how good a GPU is at rendering those complex graphical elements you need to look at the core clock of the GPU that is measured in MHz. It is important to note though that different generations of GPUs perform differently based on architectural improvements, therefore, comparing GPU clocks outside of a specific generation is generally pointless.
That is all there is to be said about GPUs vs graphics cards. Use this information carefully because with great power comes great responsibility.