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I came across this term "GPU stream processors" on http://yourultimatepc.com/ when reading about how to pick parts for a build I am doing and I just want to know more about them and how they affect the performance of GPUs.

Thanks

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This is probably extremely oversimiplified. I welcome corrections and additional information.

Modern GPUs support shaders. Shaders are small programs. When a GPU is filling in a polygon or other primitive, instead of simply turning on a pixel, it can run a small program for that pixel. The program can decide the "shade" of the pixel, or flip on/off additional pixels, or other things. This allows a wide variety of effects.

A stream processor is the entity that runs the shader programs. Stream processors do not have to be used to "shade" polygons per se, this is the basis of GPGPU/CUDA/using your GPU for things other than graphics.

You need a bunch of them running at the same time since the GPU is trying to draw a frame as fast as possible. The more there are and the faster they are, the better.

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