 | View Full Version : onboard graphics question Xx iBm xX 03-09-2003, 04:03 PM Hey , lets pretend I have a 32 mb onboard graphics card... how much RAM does it exactly take up? people told me 2-3 mb while someone told me 32 mb? anyone wanna clear this up for me... filburt1 03-09-2003, 04:34 PM Theoretically it shares it with the system RAM. However even if it had all its own RAM the performance would still suck. Even for business you should still have a separate video card. Coach 03-09-2003, 04:49 PM I built a system for my dad. He wanted something pretty inexpensive, so I went with a motherboard that had an embedded 256-bit 3D AGP card with a 64 MB buffer. It has 512 MB of SDRAM with an AMD XP 2000+ processor. I can run a game as intensive as Morrowind on it without any problems at all. Depends on the BIOS from system to system, but you can specify in it how much shared memory can be allocated. At least you can do that with any BIOS I've ever used. giancarlo 03-09-2003, 04:52 PM Coach, it is possible to get decent graphics out of an onboard one... but seperate ones get so much better frame rates and stuff. JeremyV 03-09-2003, 05:06 PM the only onboard graphics that would be acceptable is with an nForce board. Basically, onboard everything for the most part sucks for performance desktops. But if you're on a budget, its a good way to go. Coach 03-09-2003, 06:23 PM Very true giancarlo. I personally don't like integrated anything, but as Jeremy mentioned, it's good for people on a budget. My dad wanted a good system with good performance, but he was on a typical WHT "I want 10 gigs of space and 1000 gigs of transfer for $10 budget". I did the best I could. :D giancarlo 03-09-2003, 07:16 PM So very true, coach. One thing I wouldn't mind settling for is onboard sound... I found on some boards... there are some very good onboard sound chips. Not as good as say the Audigy 2 or something, but good enough. ;) fromage 03-09-2003, 10:20 PM If it's Nforce2 motherboard, it almost certainly beat the hell out of most AGP cards... giancarlo 03-09-2003, 10:44 PM Fromage.. I thought the Nforce2 motherboard doesn't have built in graphics... and is just the name of a chipset. The Nforce2 motherboards beats the heck out of the KT-400. But AGP cards? From what I heard the Nforce series does not have built in graphics. Phrozen 03-10-2003, 12:03 AM Some of the newer nForce2 boards do have onboard graphics. It's great compared to any previous onboard graphics (about the equivalent of a GeForce 4 MX440), but nothing special compared to seperate graphics cards. I dunno what Daniel was on about there... As far as any onboard peripherals go, I use onboard audio (and some cheap Avance AC97 audio at that) and honesly can't tell a difference in sound between that and, say, a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or GameTheater XP. It depends on the person though, but I can't tell the difference. They all sound the same. The nForce2 boards using the onboard SoundStorm have terrifc audio and can rival even the high end sound cards. Once again though, I still couldn't tell a difference... Onboard LAN is another thing I both use and like. Onboard or not, there's really no performace difference between 'em. Onboard LAN is just more convenient. |