New here, first post. Collect diecast. Here is my question.

My computer has Intel Graphics Accel 950. The Graphics are fine, but I was told my machine would run faster with a stand alone video card. Any recommendations?

It's not worth the money to buy a video card for the small increase ion speed that you may or may not see.

A video card will:
Get rid of onboard video, freeing up RAM (not a lot though)
Make your system compatible for certain games

A video card probally won't give you a "decent" performance boost.

post the specs of your pc

^^^Spam maybe??^^^

Kevinmtg, post your specs on your pc, then we can tell you if any performance will be found in a video card...

i am running my onboard graphics (intel d945gtplr motherboard) and i do not need a video card i bought dawn of war and it reccomends an nvidia geforce 3/ati radeon 8500 or equivalent and my onbaord runs it just finei can set it up for 64 or 128 mb of video memory

Gateway 836GM

Intel Pentium D 820
Intel 945G Chipset
Intel Graphics Accelerator 950
250 GB SATA HD
2048 MB DDR 2 Memory
Integrated Ethernet
Windows Media center 2005

...durr....2 gigs of RAM and an SATA hdd, I don't think you're gonna squeeze much outa that thing. One thing you can do to improve graphics is to go into your bios and have your mobo use more memory for the integrated graphics...I have a gig in my laptop and I have 256 mb for video.

my new system specs:D :

evga 680i
pentium d 950
raidmax volcano 630 watt psu
evga 8800gts 640 mb video card (no place to plug in monbitor on mb)
2 320 gig sata 2 drives 2 gigs corsair 6400-c4 (800 mhz) memory modules

video card is good for new games and i am ready for vista (when it is ready that is) but i do not notice any difference in usage, as stated it mayt free up a little but if oyu are not into hardcore graphics use then on board is just fine. you only need a video card if you are wanting to run games at max settings.

yeah your machine is mostly decent, and a video card upgrade would only help in areas such as gaming and 3d rendering. It also depends on if you have an open PCIe slot open, your machine should have ones since its newer.
I spent $170 on my Evga geforce 8600GTX grapics card and I can play all the newer games around max settings. If you want to a graphics card and don't do gaming (solitare does not count!) then you don't need to spend that much.

i would auggest upgrading your motherboard, of course if you are a gamer, overclocker or just want to have bragging rights i would say the evga 680i is a good motherboard however it does NOT have onboard video and a video card would be required. that 820 is a decent overclocking chip.

It's not worth the money to buy a video card for the small increase ion speed that you may or may not see.

BS. An lone video card will get back the stolen memory. Budget?

$50- Radeon x800
$100 - 7900GS / x1950x / 8600GT
$200 - 7950's
$300 - 8800GTS 320MB

BS. An lone video card will get back the stolen memory. Budget?

$50- Radeon x800
$100 - 7900GS / x1950x / 8600GT
$200 - 7950's
$300 - 8800GTS 320MB

yet another post where you have no idea what you are talking about.

fact: a video card will free up some system memory, however your cpu does still work in conjunction with the gpu, the gpu does NOT work on its own.

depending on how much ram is in the system you may not see very much difference.

i would never run less than 1 gig of ram on a system with xp installed, or less than 2 gigs on a machine with vista.


i had a 7900 gs before i moved to the 8800 gts and i saw no difference in system memory usage with the 7900 gs. when i moved to the 8800 i did see some improvement. i would upgrade system ram first, then video card, then (if you must) audio card. if you are running a 32 bit o/s then use no more than 3 gigs or you will be wasting money because 32 bit does not recognize more than that, if you are using a 64 bit o/s use 4 gigs of ram if possible. this will help you more than a video card upgrade will.

if i were you id buy a nvidia 8600 256mb off of www.ncix.com Or w/e you want they have a wide selection

Kirk

fact: a video card will free up some system memory, however your cpu does still work in conjunction with the gpu, the gpu does NOT work on its own.

No duh.

depending on how much ram is in the system you may not see very much difference.

I can guarantee you that any computer with Intel graphics will not have more than 1GB of RAM.

i would never run less than 1 gig of ram on a system with xp installed, or less than 2 gigs on a machine with vista.

You and who else. You can run XP on 64MB. Heck, I've ran Vista on 1GB. And seeing as you run it THAT high, much above recommendation, we see why you don't see a difference :rolleyes:

i had a 7900 gs before i moved to the 8800 gts and i saw no difference in system memory usage with the 7900 gs. when i moved to the 8800 i did see some improvement. i would upgrade system ram first, then video card, then (if you must) audio card. if you are running a 32 bit o/s then use no more than 3 gigs or you will be wasting money because 32 bit does not recognize more than that, if you are using a 64 bit o/s use 4 gigs of ram if possible. this will help you more than a video card upgrade will.
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x86 = 3.25GB

x64 = 128GB

Your GFX is DEDICATED. It has no effect whatsoever on MEMORY...

Sheesh...

You and who else. You can run XP on 64MB. Heck, I've ran Vista on 1GB. And seeing as you run it THAT high, much above recommendation, we see why you don't see a difference :rolleyes:


Well Me for one!

Yea you can certainly run XP or Vista on a lot less RAM if you want to spend all your time waiting for programs to load and execute. Why spend all that extra money on a video card when you can enhance performance considerably with more RAM which is Cheap.

If your gaming and need the video processing power of more expensive cards, that would be a reason to invest, if your running a system on only 64mb of RAM your not going to realize much improvement if you only upgrade the video!