Really stupid video card question.

[luciusad2004]

Ok, this is gonna be a dumb question and I probably already know the answer but i thought i would ask anyway.

I recently purchased this motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813159002) w/ the Geforce 7150 On-board graphics and nForce 630i chipsets.

I have this graphics card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130289): A Geforce 6200 w/ 256MB of memory on a PCI slot (didn't have PCIe in my box at the time of purchase).

Is the on-board graphics on my motherboard better than my PCI card? I figured its probably a newer GPU than whats on my dedicated card so maybe its better, but at the same time my dedicated card has its own memory.

I always assumed that any dedicated card was better than any integrated solution but is that actually true? Sorry for the dumb question I don't really know much about graphics cards (they change so damn fast its to hard to follow.)

[The boy 4rm oz]

I am guessing the dedicated card would still perform better. The onboard graphics chip uses your system RAM rather than having its own dedicated RAM. The dedicated card will also most likely have more streem processors which are well worth it.

[Datech]

Without doing the specific research, I'd have to guess the card is going to perform better as well. If you had a 780 mobo with 4GB of RAM and a 5 series card I might reconsider, but for your current system you should notice a positive difference between the card and the onboard.

[Luke122]

Why not benchmark both, and decide? :) Aquamark3d is a quick benchmark program that can determine which will offer better performance.

[The boy 4rm oz]

My money is on the dedicated card. Don't on board chips still access the CPU making them worse for gaming, despite the fact they don't have dedicated RAM?

[Luke122]

I still say try both with Aquamark. We had a little benchmark festival last night, and a few people got some suprising results. It's a small download, and it's free. Why not try it out?

[halcyonforever]

Yeah, all the hypothisizing we can make it really will come down to the numbers. It is true that most integrated chipsets steal system RAM. The higher end ones like the nvidia 7100 probably won't steal too many processor cycles like the integrated Intel chipsets you see most often. I don't think there is enough of a jump between the 6 and 7 series for that to be too much of a factor. So I am predicting pretty close race.

Personally I would say use both and get more monitors!

[luciusad2004]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll download it later and run a benchmark. Honestly i think ill be a lil sad if my dedicated card is outrun by on-board graphics but hey, what can i do lol, I was working w/ what at the time when i purchased it and that wasn't much.

I'll probably use the on-board eventually anyway, its got hdmi and is HDCP compliant which means i can throw a blu-ray player in my pc as soon as i get an hdcp compliant monitor.

Another quick and easy check will be to see what score windows seven gives the chipset, thought that obviously isn't as good as hard numbers.

[Luke122]

Nice.. well, then you could install the card anyways, and use that to run a second monitor. :)

[luciusad2004]

Nice.. well, then you could install the card anyways, and use that to run a second monitor. :)

I've been complaining to my gf that i need at least two more monitors. One more for my desktop and another to hook my laptop up to. I've got no room for them though lol.

[Luke122]

I've been complaining to my gf that i need at least two more monitors. One more for my desktop and another to hook my laptop up to.

Well then this will help your case. :)

Tell her that Luke says they need to be AT LEAST 32" each.

[luciusad2004]

Well then this will help your case. :)

Tell her that Luke says they need to be AT LEAST 32" each.

Lol that would be great, would probably be as big as if not bigger than all of the TVs in the house and i probalby wouldn't be able to fit more than one on my desk. My 20in (or maybe its a 19 i forget) takes up a bit under half my desk.
I think its time for a desk upgrade.

[BuzzKillington]

I'm sure things have changed since early 2000 but if you're on XP, don't forget to disable the onboard haha.

[luciusad2004]

Ok ran a quick couple of Benchmarks before and after work:

I used Aquamark 3 and ran the test at 1024x768x32 w/ AA OFF
Aniso (antristrofic filtering? ) at 4x and details at very high. Those were to stock settings. I didn't up the resolution because it probably wouldn't have worked out to well. I'm at 1680 x 1050 and these tests beat the crap outa my comp in a few parts even on low resolutions.

I ran the tests using the drivers that were downloaded from the windows update for windows 7 (Thats what nVidia recommends if you go to their site looking for windows 7 drivers)

The on-board graphics supposedly runs at a clock of 630MHz and has 256MB of dedicated memory and 639MB of available shared memory or at least thats what the Nvidia control panel told me. I couldn't figure out if these setteings were adjustable. I'm Not sure what the specs on my 6200 are other than the fact that its got 256Mb of memory dedicated to it. The specs are probably listed in the newegg link

The dedicated card scored as so:
Gfx - 1,432
CPU - 6,520
Overall - 12, 854

Onboard chipset
GFX - 1,815
CPU - 5941
Overall - 15,751

Looks like the on-board chip is better but I'm not sure if the loss of system memory is worth it to me. My regular card runs Aero fine and i only game once in a while so i might just stick to my dedicated card anyway so that the on-board one isn't stealing my memory and CPU cycles. I'f i had 4GBs of RAM and a Core2 Quad it might be a different story but I only have 2GB and a Celeron so i need all i can get.

Does anyone know how to find out if I'm running directX 10 or not?

[Luke122]

The benchmark definitely shows that the onboard is using some CPU power to run.. I'd say that if you were to overclock the dedicated card, you'd have better performance and not impact the cpu as much.

From the command prompt, type Dxdiag to verify your directx version. :)

[The boy 4rm oz]

Well wadaya know, the integrated chip actually isn't that bad. Personally I would spend a little bit extra cash to get something along the lines of a 7600 or even an 8600 if you can get em cheap. You could also OC the GPU a bit using Ntune, PowerStrip or RivaTuner. Really any utility will do.

[luciusad2004]

Thanks guys. I'll probably look in to a new video card after I upgrade my CPU. The whole reason i got this board is so that I could upgrade to either a core2 or a core2 quad depending on what my budget allows. Since i now have PCIe I'll probably upgrade my Video card sometime later this year as well. My current card is just a budget card so i didn't expect to much out of it. I just wanted to play counter strike so i picked it up one day lol. I could give overclocking a try but I'm not sure how well it would work. It's just got a basic heatsink on it.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Even with a stock heatsink you should be able to get a little more from the card. If you have the time I advise you replace the stock thermal paste with something better such as Arctic Silver 5 if you have any, if not you should really get some, especially if you intend to upgrade your CPU.

[Luke122]

Ntune did wonders on my 7600gs card.. I went from (Aquamark scores) 53k @ 400mhz to 55k @ 432mhz. Pretty minor overclock really.. :)

[The boy 4rm oz]

Every FPS counts ;).