what the heck are "independent stream processing units"

[Kungfucow]

er, I'm looking at graphics cards and I see a huge variation in the amounts of these "independent stream processing units" which corresponds greatly with he price. What exactly do they do ?

 

[esa193]

i think they help with the speed in prossesing data

 

[Rudster8161]

its like dual core cpu's but for video cards the amount is much larger. its a lot more complicated than that but simply put the more the better.

same with pixel pipelines on older cards like the nvidia 7 series and the ati X1K series. the more the better. and usually more expensive

 

[Drain You]

More isnt "ALWAYS" better just look at ATI's DX10 cards