A method and an apparatus for determining an up scale factor and a down scale factor according to a scale factor received from a graphics application program interface (API) to scale a graphics data in a graphics processing unit (GPU) are described. The up scale factor and the down scale factor may be precisely stored in the GPU based on a fixed number of bits. An actual scale factor which can be precisely stored in the GPU corresponding to the scale factor may differ from the scale factor with a difference. Graphics commands may be sent to the GPU to scale the graphics data according to the up scale factor and the down scale factor separately. A combined scale factor corresponding to a combination of the up scale factor and the down scale factor may differ from the scale factor less then the difference between the actual scale factor and the scale factor