Quick Sync is linked to Intel’s integrated graphics core, and installing a discrete card might disable it. Installing a discrete graphics card in Intel-based systems can also complicate the use of technologies like Intel’s Quick Sync video-encoding engine. Any application that benefits from such parallel processing-be it an image-editing program like Photoshop, data-encryption software, or a distributed-computing project like or run faster with the assistance of a more powerful GPU. AMD’s and Nvidia’s GPUs are made up of thousands of processors that can carry out multiple operations simultaneously. Games aren’t the only applications that benefit from the power of a discrete GPU. Video cards based on Nvidia’s GeForce GPUs support Nvidia’s proprietary physics-simulation technology, PhysX, which lend considerable realism to games that take advantage of it. PhysX isn’t universally supported, but it can have tremendous visual impact in games where it is. PhysX is Nvidia’s proprietary physics-simulation technology, which can make the objects in games behave more like they would in the real world (cloth ripples and tears, liquids flow and splatter, buildings explode into small shards, and more). It’s a key feature for Nvidia’s Shield handheld gaming device. ShadowPlay leverages the video-encoding engines built into Nvidia’s GPUs to record and stream live gameplay videos in real time, with negligible impact on frame rates. With Nvidia’s current-gen graphics cards, for example, users can take advantage of proprietary features such as ShadowPlay and PhysX. There are other benefits to using discrete graphics cards, too. You can usually crank up a game’s visual quality settings with a discrete GPU, and it will still run circles around integrated graphics. An integrated GPU, in contrast, must share both system memory and the data bus.

What’s more, the card will provide its GPU with a dedicated pool of high-speed memory.

All but the lowest-end video card will have a far more powerful GPU than what you’ll find inside a CPU. Champions for discrete graphics usually tout one major benefit: performance.

Intel 4600 graphics card