system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why can my computer run games like bf3 on ultra but still takes a few seconds to render thumbnails of photos in a folder?

Pretty much as said in the title. Why can my computer easily handle high end games but when scrolling through a folder with pictures in why does it take a second or two before the thumbnail version pops up? I'm sure there is a really good reason, educate me please!
gpt
This is because rendering a game and loading images are two entirely different processes. Let me explain each.

When rendering a game your graphics card will store lots of textures and 3D model information in its fast graphics memory along with the instructions about what to do with these pieces of information. The graphics card calculates each frame and pushes it to the screen.

When scrolling through thumbnails your computer will decide that it wants to display that image. It sends a request to your hard drive for the image, your hard drive will look for it (your hard drive is one of the slowest things in your computer) once your hard drive has found it it will send it along to be displayed on your screen. The delay is how long it took your hard drive to find and send the image.

This highlights the difference in speed between processing and information retrieval, between fast memory and a hard drive.