Both frost and fire giants, as portrayed in D&D, are loosely based on the jötunn of Norse myth. In the original myths, this was a rather vague term referring to a race of mostly (but not always) gigantic beings originally created by the primordial being Ymir. Ymir himself was certainly gigantic, since the sky is said to be the inside of his blue-coloured skull, and he was also described in the Prose Edda as "ice cold". Thus, while frost giants aren't a specific thing in Norse myth, it's clear where the idea comes from. Fire giants, apparently also descended from Ymir in the original myth, are the inhabitants of the fiery realm of Muspelheim, led by Surtur, whose primary function in the myths is to destroy the world at the conclusion of Ragnarok.Both frost and fire giants appear in a range of fictional sources, of which perhaps the most obvious are the Mighty Thor comics. These predate D&D by over ten years, although it's likely that their appearance in the game is an independent creation from the same mythic origin, since they're quite clearly different from the comicbook versions. In D&D, they are the third and fourth rungs on the six-step ladder of increasing giant power and strength and are portrayed as more technologically advanced than the smaller hill and stone giants.
1E
Frost giants are mid-sized for 1E giants, standing 15 feet (4.5 metres) tall. They are said to look essentially identical to humans apart from their height and their dead white skin. Some also have bluish hair, although most are blonde. Both text and illustration show them dressed and armed in cod-Viking style, which suggests at least some skill with metallurgy. Like the lesser kinds of giant, the frost sort are only found in small family groups, males outnumber females by three to one, and the latter are notably weaker.
Most apparently live in castles, where they live alongside frost-breathing winter wolves. Whether the latter can meaningfully be described as pets is debatable, however, considering that winter wolves are, in fact, more intelligent than frost giants are...
Fire giants, on the other hand, are lawful evil, making a more advanced civilisation more plausible - although, like frost giants, they are only as intelligent as orcs and much less so than typical humans (like many creatures in 1E, they are described as "stupid and cunning"). Unusually, while they are one step up from frost giants in terms of every physical game mechanic, they are actually shorter, at 12 feet (3.7 metres). This is offset by an extremely powerful physical build, giving them the same physique as dwarves... only three times taller and presumably over 25 times heavier. As in all later editions, they have black skin and red hair. Again, females form only 25% of the population.
The illustration shows them wearing armour as advanced as anything that humans have, suggesting a similar level of technological advancement (that of the frost giants is described as "barbarian", and so likely intended to be less advanced than civilised human work). Despite this, they are slightly less likely to live in castles than frost giants are. They have fire-breathing hell hounds as pets, although where they get them from is unclear, since, unlike winter wolves, they aren't supposed to be native to the same plane of existence.
2E
Like other giants, the frost and fire varieties have greatly increased in height in this edition. Fire giants are now 18 feet tall (5.5 metres), while the taller, slimmer, frost giants reach 21 feet (6.4 metres), equivalent to the very largest giants in the previous edition. Females are said to be smaller, but probably no more so than the variation seen in humans, and they're just as good at fighting as the males. Frost giants previously had skin and/or muscle tougher to penetrate than mail armour; that's dropped slightly now, but we're told that they often wear actual mail over it, making them significantly harder to injure than before.
Frost giants also live in larger communities than previously, with a dozen or so individuals now being typical and a few settlements being much larger than this. Some of them are intelligent enough to practice magic, showing a preference for healing and protection with a little weather magic thrown in for good measure. Humanoid slaves are specifically stated to be rare and few in number, but they keep a wider range of animal guards than before.
All of these things are broadly true of fire giants, too. Their communities are somewhat larger, presumably because of their lawful alignment, and their castles are described as being well built with effective defences and traps to waylay invaders. Their skin turns out to be no tougher than that of frost giants, but their armour is notably superior, if perhaps not quite as good as the plate-mail look that it's given might imply. Their spellcasters are also more varied in their abilities than those of frost giants.
Both kinds of giant have their own specific language, as well as speaking the giant lingua franca.
3E
In addition to losing their unique languages, we're back down to the 1E heights for both races again in this edition, and the looks remain unchanged. The more detailed stats show that both races have even thicker skin than before, pretty much as good as plate armour. Frost giants are, in fact, the tougher of the two in this regard, although fire giants more than compensate for this by their better quality armour.
Both types of giant are now fully as intelligent as humans, which fits better with the fire giants' skills at metallurgy, if nothing else. They turn out to be slow and lumbering, having a lack of agility that must be a particular problem for frost giants trying to walk on slippery ice - the bigger they are, the harder they fall and all that. They both have low-light vision, which would be handy during long arctic nights and in flickering firelight.
Their communities are slightly smaller than in 2E but are supplemented by a considerable number of ogres or trolls, among other creatures. Both of these are of low intelligence and much weaker than giants, so they're probably bullied into subservience. For what it's worth, winter wolves are now slightly less intelligent than frost giants, which may change the relationship there, too. On the other hand, they almost never keep human slaves, in keeping with earlier editions. Fire giants are specifically stated to sometimes have female leaders.
5E
Giants in general return to their 2E sizes in this edition, but the appearance of fire giants is otherwise unchanged. For the first time, however, the skin of frost giants is said to be blue, rather than white. Frost giants have dropped back down to their pre-3E intelligence levels and, even assuming that what they wear is equivalent to thick hide armour, their skin is less impenetrable than it used to be - although still impressive. They have switched alignment to 'neutral evil', which makes their apparent degree of cooperation easier to explain.
They apparently disdain craftsmanship (perhaps they don't like the fire that forging metal would require) but, while we're told how they can make crude spears and the like by lashing together stolen goods, they must be getting those giant-sized axes from somewhere. Fire giants are the obvious source... except that, save for places like Iceland where volcanos and glaciers co-exist, the trade routes required would seem implausibly long.
Fire giants retain their fully human intelligence, explaining their craft skills, and are more perceptive and physically fit than before. Given that they're wearing full plate, there's no indication that their skin is much tougher than that of humans, if at all. Their culture is described as highly regimented and militaristic but placing a high value on artisanal skill.
Frost and fire giants, then, are portrayed as more technologically advanced than hill and stone giants, being Iron Age or medieval rather than palaeolithic. Reflecting this fact, they are less likely to live in caves, and more so in "castles", a tendency that increases with the editions until it's almost universal by 5E. Nonetheless, in 1E in particular, they live in small family groups of no more than about eight (including children) which makes it hard to imagine that they would need a castle, rather than a longhouse or simple tower, or would have the wherewithal to build one if they did.
However, their communities also become larger in later editions, making this somewhat more plausible. Although this isn't an issue for fire giants, for frost giants there's also the question of their chaotic personalities, which makes it hard to imagine the sort of stratified society that a human castle would have. Lacking humanoid servants until 3E, by which time they are mostly dim-witted ogres and trolls, it seems likely that the giants must do their own cooking, for instance, as well as repairing any clothing or performing architectural maintenance. (Frost giants, of course, may not cook their food, which helps).This ceases to apply in 5E, at least for fire giants, since they have now switched to employing large numbers of slaves in farms and mines, to keep them supplied with food, metal ore, and so on. Frost giants don't, probably because it would be hard to keep the slaves fed and alive in an arctic wasteland, but their culture seems to be cruder and less centralised than that of fire giants, with a heavy reliance on hunting.
The large size of frost and fire giants has the same implications for them as for hill and stone giants. It's hard to come up with figures for fire giants, since they're explicitly not scaled-up humans in terms of their shape, but, assuming they scale up perfectly (which is a simplification), frost giants would weigh a little over a ton in 1E/3E or three tons in 2E/5E - similar to a female Asian elephant.
More significant, biologically, is the resistance of both types of giant to extremes of temperature. In the real world, warm-blooded animals can withstand the cold by possessing thick fur and/or blubber, or else by hibernating and shutting down bodily functions (including most of their production of body heat). Despite having obvious mammalian features, however, frost giants are probably not warm-blooded in the sense in which we usually think of it.
Instead, it seems more likely that they maintain a naturally low body temperature; in the technical parlance they are homeothermic, but still have very cold blood. Compounds such as the natural antifreeze of Antarctic fish might help there, although the rules of real-world physics and chemistry would mean that something with a supercold body temperature would move and function rather slowly; the Arrhenius equation sees to that. It's also debatable whether it would really protect you against white dragon breath, which is lethal rather more rapidly than exposure to even most Antarctic weather, but these are fantasy creatures, after all.A very cold natural body temperature would also make frost giants susceptible to heat, which is only true in 3E... but then, very few creatures have a specific "vulnerability" to anything in 5E. The reverse would be true of fire giants if they have an abnormally high body temperature, but they don't really need one and the issue for them is entirely different. That's because, while many real-world animals can survive in hot conditions by virtue of effective sweating, exposed surfaces that radiate body heat away and so on, it's unlikely that any of these would be of much help to, say, a desert rat that got blasted with a flamethrower.
Fire giants are doubtless well adapted to hot conditions and can survive on relatively small amounts of water. They'd have to be, given where they're normally said to live. But this wouldn't make them incombustible. Perhaps their skin (which is unusually tough, prior to 5E) contains asbestos-like materials and has an insulating effect that prevents fire from boiling the giant's insides. Asbestos itself is an unlikely candidate since it would make the skin look glassy or mineral-like, but something like the PBI that firefighters' suits are made out of might work if the resistance isn't purely magical.
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