The urge to have a fast CPU is self-explanatory, but why do we need a fast graphics card? And why do we state that having a fast video card is way more important than having a fast CPU?
The reason for that is GPU acceleration. Today's video cards are extremely fast. Just consider how much computational power is needed to support modern 3D games in high resolutions and 60 frames-per-second, and you'll realize it takes a lot of processing power.
Using that power to break passwords can give a significant boost to the speed of recovery. By offloading computation-intensive parts of the process to the massively parallel array of graphical processing units (GPUs) of a typical gaming board costing no more than $200-300, one can increase the speed of recovering iTunes passwords 10 to 20 fold. By using an even faster video card, or by utilizing two or more cards, one can boost speeds 30 to 50 fold compared to using a high-end quad-core CPU. Interestingly, ElcomSoft...