Is the onboard video the same as a video card?? 2

[TboneJr]

Hello
I just bought the Acer AST180 PC. It has the Nvidia Gforce 6100 onboard video 256 MB. The motherboard I can't find anything on it - its a MCP61SM-AM. Anyway it has a 16X PCI slot for video upgrade. My problem is this. I went into the bios and changed the frame buffer size from auto to 256. If Im correct this dedicates 256 MB of system ram to the onboard video. As long as I have enough system memory for the computer to run well - will the onboard video with 256 MB of dedicated memory run as well as if I put a 256 MB 16X PCI video card in ?? Im not a big gamer but the games I do play I like them to play smooth (I don't mind using lower settings in my games) I guess Im trying to decide if I want to get a video card or add more system ram so I can dedicate the 256 MB for the video.

Thanks for any help or advice

Tbone Terry

 

[HalComps]

you'll have to disable the onboard graphics if u wish to use the PCI slot graphics, as this causes conflicts.

 

[ski]

A dedicated video card is typically faster than an onboard video adapter because the former usually has a faster GPU and sometimes faster RAM. Also, its RAM is accessed quicker than the system RAM because it's located on the card.
Suggest that you try the onboard video adapter first. If the frame rates studder, then install a video card.

 

[paparazi]

A few pointers:

Onboard graphics, however much memory you allocate to it, is generally slower than a dedicated "seperate" graphics card.
That having said, the Nvidia 6100 chipset is amoungst the better performing onboard solutions.
Obviously if you buy a very basic "cheap" graphics card the performance may only be 20-30% better than sticking with onboard, if however go with something more mid range ie: Nvidia 7300GT or 7600GS, your graphics performance will be several hundred percent faster.
Onboard will be OK for pre-05 games etc, anything newer will need a seperate card.
Martin


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[ATLMatt]

As a general rule of thumb, on-board is fine for desktop applications, but when you get into gaming, a PCI-X video card with its own memory is almost always going to give you a significant boost in performance. In my experience, the difference has always been night and day.

The above poster mentioned an Nvidia 7600gs based card, which is a great value for a casual gamer, and can be had for around $70-90 from your favorite on-line computer parts store.

When you install a new card, you may need to set your default video card to the pci-x card slot rather than the on-board, but with almost all modern systems you don't need to disable the on-board. You probably will want to, so as to free up the RAM the on-board card takes, unless you want to run a dual monitor desktop. (Which while not always useful, is really fun to play with).

 

[kmcferrin]

Just a clarification, ATLMatt means PCI-E graphics card, not PCI-X. PCI-E is PCI Express, is used primarily for graphics cards (though other cards using the interface are now becoming available), and is pretty much standard on all new system boards. PCI-X is PCI Extended, which was a new PCI standard that is generally used for high speed storage adapters, and is typically only found on server motherboards.

 

[ATLMatt]

Thanks for the clarification, the morning coffee dose hasn't fully worked its way into my system yet =D

 

[cdogg]

Just as a side note about PCI-X, some PC's that we have on site where I work have this slot fitted with a workstation graphics card (like the Matrox G450). In fact, ATI and Nvidia also used to make workstation-level graphics cards for PCI-X.

So there are some exceptions, though kmcferrin is right about its general use for storage controllers.

~cdogg
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