Hi, I’m currently a rising senior, and I’ve been interested in computers ever since I started growing pimples. Although I admit the only reason I became interested was (is) because of gaming. I’m currently building a new computer and I love reading through specs, learning about the differences between different motherboards, processors, graphics cards, etc. And I very much so appreciate their aesthetics and design. A dream job for me would be working for nvidia, helping design graphics cards. I understand the vast majority of jobs will not be so glamorous, but what major(s) would help me get there?
Computer science or engineering: writing software or firmware
Electrical engineering: design of electrical and electronic aspects
Mechanical engineering: design of mechanical aspects (e.g. the case and touch screen of a phone)
Industrial engineering: design of manufacturing and logistics processes
I think what you’re looking for is called computer engineering. Not “computer science” or “computer science and engineering”, just computer engineering. It is usually part of the electrical engineering department as either a specialization within EE or a separate major. It deals with kind of the mid-point between EE and CS, the classes tend to revolve around computer architecture, digital systems, operating systems, with some coding thrown in. A computer engineering degree will qualify you to work on most hardware teams, most firmware teams, and some software teams depending on the company.
By designing a graphics card, if you mean design the physical board and figure out what circuit components should go where, that would be in the Electrical Engineering realm and under analog systems. Getting the graphics card to play nicely with other components in a computer is more computer engineering or systems engineering.