On the new Video Cards, What is a...?

On the new Video cards from Nvidia (8800GTX GTS) and AMD/ATI (HD 2900 XT),





They have "Stream Processor Units". I'm aware they probably have some important functions and probably assist DirectX 10 in some way, but what exactly do they do? What would be the benifit of having more?


The 8800GTX has 128 and the ATI HD 2900 XT has 320.





I read the Wiki submission and couldn't really gather much from it. Or rather, it didn't touch on the benifits of having more over another in a video card.


Any help for the laymen would be appreciated. Thanks!

On the new Video Cards, What is a...?
Stream processors are the new "shaders." The more you have, the more data you can process and output at a time.


Maximum PC says that they can process vertex, pixel, geometry, or physics data.





The ATI HD 2900 XT is better, if you were wondering. It is faster.





It's like internet access; the more connections you have, the more data you can send and receive at a time. (nobody uses more than 1 internet connection, but if you did, theoretically you'd get more performance with more connections.)
Reply:They basically increase the performance by about 20x with the same amount of power usage, and keeping the gpu on the card the same size as an average gpu for a video card. Thats to put it simple pretty sure thats what you want.