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Integrated 3D Graphics Motherboard Round-Up
Keefe writes "In the recent past, integrated video was seldom a viable solution for hardcore computer gamers. Enthusiasts shunned from motherboards with integrated video, and opted to buy ones without it, in additional to a much faster ATi or Nvidia-powered graphics accelerator. Today, the picture is beginning to change. The last few integrated motherboards sported decent graphics chipsets, like the Nvidia NForce (GeForce2 MX), ATI IGP320 (Radeon VE), or Intel 845G. Techware Labs has taken a look at the current integrated 3D video chipsets on the market and concluded how they perform in the latest 3D software."
The submitter makes it sound like these integrated video platforms are good enough for gamers. WTF? At no point in history, including now, have integrated video accelerators offered acceptable performance for current games. Sure, these things might run Quake 3, but they better, seeing as it's so many years old.
True gamers are never going to use integrated video, when even the cheapest of new videocards spank them in all terms of performance, and most joe blows don't need anything approaching good 3d performance in their integrated video, because their activities consist of emailing and web surfing.
These motherboards are trying to fill a niche that doesn't exist. Power users will ignore the integrated video, and normal users (if they have any say in what goes into their box) will get cheaper integrated video solutions that don't cost as much as 'supAr fast 3d shared memory game integrated 3d card things'.
Regardless of the level of chip you put into an integrated motherboard no serious gamer will buy this...
If for no other reason than upgrade-ability. What's they point of intergrating the latest chip when a year from now (in the gamers mindset, and the games development) that chip will be out-dated...
and from a manufacturing standpoint you will be left with motherboards that are too expensive for the low-mid end user and useless to the high end gamer...
All arround pointless....
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
The motherboard in our DB machine at work has an ATI Rage chip integrated. Especially useful for rendering our logs in 3D. It doesn't support vertex shaders, though, so the lighting on the timestamps is kind of shoddy.
First of all, I'll let somebody behind me take on the dumb comment.
Second of all, when i build systems for my family and friends, I want to pick integrated video (after explaining to them the inherent drawbacks)that doesn't suck, and always pick a MB that has AGP as well. I'm the one that reviews available information on hardware performance and tells them "yes, it's ok to buy the nforce mboard, it'll play warcraft II" or whatever game they are looking at. And i haven't purchased anything faster than a 1 gig Tbird yet..
The problem is that graphics accellerators undergo a major increase in performance about every 6 months - they increase in speed FAR faster than Moores law would lead you to expect. (There are several good reasons for this that I won't go into here).
Hence, it's almost certain that you'll want to upgrade your graphics card before your CPU, memory or motherboard which are all plodding along at Moore's law rates (or slower in the case of memory).
Worse still, the integrated chipsets are always at least one or two years behind the cutting edge of graphics technology - and often share RAM with the CPU which slows everything down still further.
So - would you buy a motherboard where the CPU and RAM couldn't be upgraded?
No?
Then WTF would you want an integrated graphics chip?
The ONLY reason to do this is to get a cheaper PC in the first place - but if you buy one of these ultra-cheap boxes, remember that it's graphics are a year or two out of date on the day you bought it.
Fortunately, it's usually possible to plug a real graphics adaptor into these motherboards and have it automatically override the built-in chipset - but since you nearly always want to do that, the extra expense of the built-in chipset is a waste.
www.sjbaker.org
Raise your hand if the first thing you did was disable the AC97 trash on your motherboard. This is a sad thing to have to do, disable well intentioned chipsets. Perhaps, in some distant future of the motherboard this will be helpful. Now if I can just figure out how to get UT2003 to run on my machine with a i870 and NO AGP slot (DOH!)
Hey - is that the right usuage of shunned? Just checking.
This page is temporarily unavailable.
/me raises one eyebrow.
The reason for this is we had to limit the bandwidth for this article at ~1.0 MBPS because we were linked at Slashdot.
Interesting, i haven't seen a notice like that before.
Enthusiastic gamers won't buy this. What it offers maybe top notch for today, but Average Joe now knows Moore's Law :)
Upgradability(is it a word?) is the key, I think.
This is the funniest signature I could ever think of.
Don't be elitist. There are plenty of gamers out there that can't bloody afford the latest and greatest, much less upgrade every two years (6 months?). Some folks are actually interested in knowing what the best integrated video is, even if it doesn't compare to your Robocop 6000 SUX.
If only they had a sample of the NVIDIA nForce2 to compare. Then again, maybe they did -- anyone seen a mirror? I loaded their page once, it linked a supposed mirror, but it was for a 40x CDRW review...
The newer generation of boards also have an AGP Port. Many older integrated boards did not, and the ones that did were either onboard video OR AGP. The newer boards allow BOTH.
So you can run two monitors, one with high speed for games, the other for console stuff (and it does not slam main memory hard at all) without burning any precious PCI slots.
This is somewhat mitigated by 2 and 3 way video out AGP boards, but still...
Anyone have a mirror of the article?
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Thanks to the good guys over at Stanford we now have a mirror of the review. Click here to view!
While waiting for this page to load check out our irc channel at irc.techwarelabs.com #techwarelabs
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Sure, it still may not be enough for you 'hardcore gamers'...
but Shuttle computers and nVIDIA are planning on releasing an integrated GeFORCE 4 MX motherboard. This will be particularily cool for shuttle itself, who makes relatively small (and attractive) barebones systems. Not having to leave space for an AGP card will help them a lot. (btw- I have nothing to do with either of these companies)
Their joint press release
Also, I don't think the purpose of these integrated cards is generally to keep gamers happy, they'll want to upgrade every few months anyhow. Integration is there to make it cheaper for the rest of us to get decent graphics on a cheap box.
Like another poster pointed out, integrated motherboards aren't targeted at serious gamers. They're targeted at average people.
Some of the early-generation ones didn't come with an extra AGP slot or a way of disabling the on-board options, but that seems to have been fixed now.
True, you might not find 5.1 sound or AGP8x/GeForce4 4400 performance, but if you consider who these motherboards are targeted at, it's good enough.
Just a comparison in Singapore:
Motherboard + video card + sound card >= 400
Integrated motherboard >= 185
http://cyclonite.stanford.edu/~eswierk/mirrors/40x _burner_roundup/index_1.shtml
put the what in the where?
It would be nice if future motherboards can take advantage of these integrated video cards by using their additional power and memory for performing other, lower-priority operations while leaving those that need higher processing power to those who opt to buy a separate graphics accelerator.
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Does anyone know of motherboards that have an DVI output for their integrated graphics? As a fan of low-noise low-cost computers I am interested in motherboards with integrated graphics, but I need a DVI connector.
.. but in my experience, boards with integrated video cards don't have an onboard AGP slot. Which means if you ever wanted to upgrade your graphics card, you'll be forced to get an PCI card. Now, that is bad!
/. so oh well. Man, when is /. going to develop mirror.slashdot.com ?
Site is
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}
Live web cams
You tell em brother. Please label that flaimbait because it is.
I built a system for my mother and one for her friend. Immediately I looked for integrated video. Its cheaper. Its more "integrated" thus requires less maintainanace in the form of drivers.
The original post must have been written "tongue in cheek." Their is no way integrated video will EVER be viable for the gamer. If it is ever viable for the gamer, it will cost too much for the primary audience...our non-gaming family members.
I can speak from personal experience on this one here. This mobo isn't for your hardcore gamer, its for your average computer user who still wants to play video games at a reasonable price. I went the cheap way out and bought a barebones amd athlon 1700+ system. The motherboard that came with it is total crap. It had integrated *everything*, and all of it sucked. The vga capabilities were a joke (SiS), the audio was crappy, and it didn't even have an unused AGP slot to plug in a decent video card. So I'm left with two options: Go out and buy a new, feature rich motherboard, along with a new graphics card, and ethernet card, and sound card... Or I can just buy one of these nice nForce motherboards. They have one on newegg for $80. It has built in 5.1 dolby audio, and the integrated nForce chipset. Plus it has an additional AGP Slot, should I want to upgrade in the future. So this GeForce4 mx- ish vga pared with the athlon 1700+ proc and the 512 mb of 2100 DDR ram is actually QUITE sufficient to play pretty much any game I would want right now, including UT2k3. Sure I can't run it maxed out with all settings on their highest level but it still looks nice and fast. And for only $80 its definitly worth the price. And if at some point down the road I want to play Doom3, then I can just go get a faster video card and that will be that. So stop knocking these integrated motherboards -- they do what they are supposed to do, and they do it pretty damn well. And if I had to guess, there is actually a pretty big market for these type of things.
http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:n9wnFpPcULcJ: www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/video/integratedvga/+ integrated+vga+roundup&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
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I agree with the other replies to this message. I'm almost sure the guy parent comment is a troll - either that or a moron.
These newer designs, with _real_ 3d graphics are a great way to save a few bucks. I just built my sister a system using an NForce board and a Athlon 1400. It's a very capable system. It runs UT2002 and War3 very well. Plus, if she does get into 3d stuff and wants better performance adding a 'real' geforce is always an option.
Tell me about it. Couldn't even get it looking good with the 'vesa' driver. Had to settle for temporarily using WinXP until I get the Shuttle SS51G. What's the word on those SIS graphics? Other than that, frame rates are respectable enough for fraggin on the LAN. Nobody is gonna bitch about an open seat if they don't have a box of their own to use. Of course I have to have my GF3 w/Nvidia drivers on Slackware!!
There are many arguments in this thread about "gamers won't by this because of this and that and this..."
Guess what? We all bought these integrated systems, it's called a ps2, gamecube, or xbox.
So it's slightly different under the hood but the idea is the same. And you know what, as a gamer I appreciate the simplicity of consoles.
There will always be hardcore enthusiasts who will buy the big, bad, best stuff. That's a certain market. However, as an electronics manufacturer with a payroll you've got to follow the bell curve and shoot for the group within the bell, right?
I think the more products that speak to the whole range of computer users and gamers is a good thing.
Oh yeah, better integrated chips mean I won't always get stuck with the sh*tty 11mb shared card in that crappy dell l800 when purchasing gets cheap on the next upgrade.
You can play Everquest, Ultima Online (3D client,) America's Army, Warcraft 3, all Sims versions, and every half-life mod known to man with a GeForce2 MX and an Athlon 1 ghz quite nicely. It may not be as pretty as your more powerful cards, but your gaming experience with older gear is still quite good. You're not really missing out on the most popular gaming venues with an old system.
Also, it's often not a matter of not being able to afford the card, but a matter of interest. If the low-end integrated video can play the more popular titles, it's possible that the player might develop an interest in gaming that he didn't have when he bought the machine (reason no. 1 to ALWAYS make sure you have proper expansion slots!)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
sometimes the cheapest sh*t you can find come's with integrated gfx ;) (being nforce or intel cheappo). then it's not bad to know how much the gfx is worth for example if you later upgrade the whole machine and would like to relocate your gfx card to your friend, and use the mobo for divx box or similar. same with integrated audio, nics and other stuff sometimes.
and people are buying via's mobos with integrated CPU ffs.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
is a nForce (or better yet, nForce2) in a micro-ITX form factor. Is that too much to ask? I have this dream of a computer I can carry with my laptop, plug in to power and firewire networking when I need it, and use as a remote kernel for mathematica, when it begins to bog down... which means I need an absurdly small motherboard that can take modern processors.
I've had this sig for three days.
I have a severely overclocked GeForce 3 Ti200 and am getting ready to upgrade. Why? Becuase Unreal Tournament 2003 has unacceptable frame rates above 800x600 -- especially with things like trilinear filtering, hi-res textures, etc. enabled. What possible good would an even older generation of 3D video integrated on to a motherboard be?
I have two other systems with integrated video. One is a Dell server and the other is a homebuilt server (at $239 after rebate, I couldn't pass up the Dell). For servers, integrated video is fine. The only other value to integrated video is for general office use PCs where gaming performance is (should?) not be an issue.
Even if someone were to decide that the 3D performance with an integrated video was acceptable, where is the upgrade path when a new game they want won't run at an acceptable speed? Throw out the whole motherboard and get a new one? What was a simple upgrade now turns into a major pain, possibly with an entire OS reinstall (Windows becomes even more unstable after you swap the hardware out from under it and it attempts to re-detect).
So why put a 3D accelerator on the motherboard? So that marketing dweebs can advertise a cheap PC to consumers by touting the "advanced 3D graphics accelerator for the ultimate gaming experience!" Stupid people will buy them and companies will make money. It's as simple as that.
Are these really, "honestly" any good now?
-=fshalor
-=fshalor
You gotta pay to play period, I don't think it has anything to do with being an elitist. If you want to be a gamer and not have to upgrade your video card you'll be relegated to playing older games at 640x480. If you want to blame someone blame the game designers who create the games which require ever increasing graphics and cpu horsepower. And to be honest with you I actually don't even think its fair to blame them. The game designers are just trying to produce the best looking games possible. They are literally just using the technology that is available to them. You can't expect them to give up on all graphical progress just so people with Geforce 1's can continue to play every game at 1024x768.
I can also completlely relate to how much it sucks to have to upgrade your hardware so often. But like I said that's the price you pay for being a gamer. This is NOT a cheap hobby. I don't know where people got the idea that gaming is a cheap hobby. I assume its a relic from the mid 1990's when the pre hardware accelerated games didn't require the latest and great videocard, but those days are long gone. These days it's a 24 month cycle for older games and a 12-16 month cycle for the latest FPS's. Of course like I said you can turn all the options down, but who wants to play games at 800x600 on a 19" monitor?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
2D and 3D support is already on XFree86 and DRI CVS respectively. So the next XFree86 should most probably include it too.
That's the link the actual site gave as a mirror -- go figure :-)
nForce chipset features a 5.1 sound chip, and it is better than most cards sold separately (including SB Live series) in terms of CPU usage...
Donate free food to the hungry at The Hunger site.
that companies are promoting integrated video. Unwitting computer novices won't be able to upgrade easily. This will only confirm their misguided belief that computers are too complex, technical and expensive to make it worth their while.
I know because ten years ago I felt that way myself, even though I was reasonably techno-savvy (writing my own autoexec.bat files, etc.). I swore never to open a computer! Nowadays I blithely swap parts in and out, thanks to good advice and a good, generic machine that was easily upgraded.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
Usually I'd tend to agree with this, anything onboard tends to leech its resources, taking up RAM or CPU when a seperate card might have handled this on its own. At least most newer board (not all) have the option of disabling the onboard devices from the bios so that you can install others without conflicts.
For power computer users, most onboard sucks. For an office-type PC, it's nice if you have your NIC, Video, and Sound all on the mainboard. This tends to make configuring the thing a little easier (with the exemption of some board which don't duely identify the onboard chips causing driver nightmares when installing a newer OS).
Onboard sound is a lot less messy than video though, also depending on the chipset. My board came with a SB PCI128 clone. Nothing super by most standards, and yet performance-wise I notice very little difference between it and peripheral soundcards. The "surround" feature is ok, it lets me use the line-in as a line-out for a 4 speaker effect, which works in a lot of games supporting 4 speaker directsound-surround.
I'm looking to build a new system now. I'll probably piece it together over a month or to, so built-in is nice in this case. After paying for the motherboard+cpu+HD+drive+case+CD-ROM (have a GeForce4 for it already, thank goodness), I think that I can allow for a cheap onboard soundcard and/or NIC. As long as I can disable them through the BIOS, then I won't have to start without sound, but I can always pop in a decent soundcard later.
On a related note, does anyone know which SoundCards are decent but not hugely expensive for somebody who is very into gaming, etc but not really sound development (although an input I could jack my guitar into would be way cool).
When can I get a dual-AGP board? - phorm
If you're setting up, say, a server, why on earth would you pay a penny more on graphics than you have to for basic diagnostics and BIOS access?
May we never see th
a board that will let you use integrated graphics and the agp slot at the same time. It would be great for a dual monitor setup, reducing both the number of cards in your pc and probably cost as well.
I STILL have trouble running games like ... Soldier of Fortune 2
Soldiers of Fortune runs fine in snes9x, even on my old 333 MHz PII laptop with a 66 MHz bus and no 3D acceleration. Yeah, it's a piece of crap, but it runs.
Yes, I know, Soldier of Fortune != Soldiers of Fortune.
Will I retire or break 10K?
1024x768 seems to be the general consensus for the minimum any game should run at. 800x600 is just noticeably worse on a 19" monitor.
Then why do people like to play games in 640x480 interlaced on the 36-inch display down in the lobby?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Will it run the top of the line games at an acceptable level in 2 years?
Top of the line in 3D graphic detail, or top of the line in fun? I choose the latter, which is why I play games on my GBA and my GBA emulator. You don't need 3D accelerated video for that, just a fast (866 MHz PIII) processor and some bandwidth from the processor to the video card (TNT2). Take it up a bit (recent Athlon and GeForce 2) and you can emulate many N64 games.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Come on, im running UT2003 @1024 and max detail with my old Duron750 + Geforce2 MX 32MB
Then what you consider an acceptable minimum frame rate is different than what I do, that's all. Nothing wrong with that and I say be glad that you are satisfied. For the record, I'm using an Athlon XP1700+, plenty of RAM, and a Western Digital 120GB/7200rpm/8MB-cache hard drive. I am dissatisified with the frame rate when there is a lot of on-screen action with multiple bots in a fire fight.
Maybe they should build a new feature into apache-Slashdot Effect Guard.
You could always just mod_throttle all users coming from Referer contains slashdot.org, Referer contains memepool.com, and Referer contains kuro5hin.org.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That's the link the actual site gave as a mirror -- go figure :-)
Look before you link. Make sure it's the right story and not goatse.cx. However, in some cases, even that isn't possible.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Because that's a TV, dumbass
And what's wrong with playing video games on a standard NTSC television set?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Because it's worth $20-$50 or so to have the video on-board. It takes up less space, has less impact on cooling, and is less likely to pop out during shipping.
That's pretty much it, though. Good 3D is utterly worthless for 99% of all server applications.
If you actually read the posted review, you would see that things have come quite away from the standard SiS integrated chipset and others which weren't any good at anything, even desktop apps.
Integrated graphics have their advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages
- Cheap because most of the integrated solutions use OLD graphics chips (ATI Rage, Nvidia G-Force2 MX, Matrox G400)
- No installation required
- Good for OEMs
Disadvantages
- Newer integrated graphics mobos are costly like the Nvidia NForce range
- Not enough power to handle the demands of serious gamers and professional artists
- Upgrades will be costly because one would have already paid for the graphics in the mobos price, also once you upgrade, integrated graphics will need to be disabled and becomes useless
- Technical problems with integrated graphics will be impossible to fix
Integrated graphics chips reduce the up front cost of a PC, but they steal memory bandwidth from non-graphics tasks, as opposed to graphics cards which contain their own memory bus to minimize AGP use, so dedicated graphics cards may actually improve non-graphic performance. That's how MacOS 10.2 works, so I've read.
I've just built a system around an NForce board and it is sweeeet. For about 120$ CDN, you get a damn speedy chipset with 'good-enough' 3d performance and very decent audio (no worse than SB Live, at any rate). Do the same with a cheaper board, say the ECS K7S5A, and you've got a flaky system that runs about 10-15% slower and costs you 100$ + 50$ sound card + 100$ video.. for half the price you get it all in one neat package.
Sure, I'll keep my own Geforce 4 128mb, but for my mother this system will keep her busy for years to come, and run all the non-FPS games moms love, like the Sims and Monkey Island. Now if your mom is into UT2003, she might frown upon 2-years-late 3d performance, but then you'd probably be too young to even afford your own underwear so it's a moot point.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"Their is no way integrated video will EVER be viable for the gamer"
Can I remind you of this in a week or two when the nForce2 - based systems start coming out, then?
You know, the ones with a kick-ass embedded GeForce 4MX, which wipes the floor with my GeForce 2...
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Okay, first of all the igp's in the motherboard's by themselves are awesome. But in the real world performance is always weaker with the integrated video no matter who makes them.
Even after developing a dual channel ddr memory system for there nforce mobo it still performed way below an nforce did with a separate geforce 2 mx card in the agp slot.
BUT for hardcore amd gamers the nforce has always been the best choice! When the 266 mhz fsb wars were going on nothing could beat a nforce mobo with a separate video card, namely the geforce 3.
Now it's fallen behind again due to the fact that newer mobos have memory clocks of 333 mhz but the new nforce2 should be able take the crown as the fastest amd motherboard around.
Hmmm... Pie...
My god what are you talking about??? This mobo kicks all other amd mobos asses easily. Don't take my word for it check out hardware reviews in different sites.
ALL nforce2 and nforce mobos come with an agp slot. But not all of them have igp's... For a non-rich gamer you can forego the igp and get a separate graphics card. The rich gamer can have both the igp for backup and a separate high performance graphics card in the agp slot.
Hmmm... Pie...
Onboard anything is still worthless, with the exception (MAYBE) of onboard ethernet card. I have an old Apple Quadra. It's old, and will stay that old. Why? Because you can't upgrade it. If you buy a mobo w/ integrated graphics (and especially w/o an additional AGP slot), your stuck in the same situation (a little less extreme).
Say, you build a computer with integrated video. Top of the line in it's day. 3 months later, it isn't. There's a newer/better video card. Well, you have to get rid of your current mobo/processor, replace all those parts, AND buy the new video card. Or, say there's a newer/better processor. You have to buy a new mobo/processor, but you can't find a mobo for that chip that has integrated video. You then have to buy a new video card. Buying the video card will save you money in the long run.
Now, if your a little company (like Dell but smaller), the people you sell them to will most likely only need the computer for less graphic intensive apps (unlike the games of today). In that case, you might find an actual need for integrated video. But, if your consumers have a *SLIGHT* interest in upgrading, you do NOT want integrated anything at all.
As I said, Mac's are all integrated with little to no possibilities to upgrade; that, in my opinion, is why PC's still rule the market.
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
Well, the human eye sees at approximately 30 FPS so, much more than that is rather pointless. But, when trying to push every little FPS out of your system makes integrated video pointless.
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
Actually, the nforce2 chipset itself would be ideal for gamers, media/graphic designers etc..because of the fact that nvidia produces a superior memory bus controller. While it is true that SiS and VIA are playing catch up in the Dual channel DDR field, who was the first to provide this? Furthermore, who was the first to provide the 128bit DDR interface?
On the contrary, Nvidia does invest into such "bleeding" technology with it's DualDDR R&D(giving intel based 1066RAMBUS chipsets a run for their money). On The Athlon side of things this is the best chipset at present when it comes to memory bandwidth and speed.
To covers basic(bleeding edge) facts:
1. nforce2 platform will support 8x agp
2. The system platform Processor(SPP Northbridge) version will not have integrated graphics
3. Otherwise the mobos will have integrated geforce4 mx running at 250MHz (similar to geforce4 mx 420) using the IGP northbridge.
4. slapping in some sticks of the PC3200 ram in a nforce DDR400 board, in combination the latest Athlon XP's, will allow an intel spanking 6.4/gb per sec bandwidth for that Athlon over clocking a$$.
5. nvidia was one of the first to support standards such as AMD's Hypertransport. The MCP(Southbridge) is connected to the IGP/SPP northbridge using a Hypertransport link.
6. Nforce2 processors are in production NOW
NVIDIA nForce2 Engineered to Deliver Outstanding Performance for AMD Athlon CPUs
"Teamed with the fastest Athlon XP processors to date, nForce2 and Athlon XP is dollar-for-dollar the best gaming platform on the market, and we look forward to building blazing fast systems around these innovative and impressive technologies."Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest.
"NVIDIA's new nForce2 AMD AthlonXP-based platforms with advanced 333FSB support outperforms any platform available in the market today," said Oskar Wu, Head AMD Board Designer at ABIT
-Jason
Hmm.. that's interesting. I use an nForce board at home with it's integrated graphics and find it quite crisp and clear at the 1024x768 I usually use it at, and it also seemed fine at 1152x9??. It may not be a top-end, super-high-quality 2D card, but in my experience it's been better than the vast majority of systems I've used at various jobs (which mostly had el-cheapo video cards installed).
What resolution do you run the thing at?
That's it!? Geez, how can you survive, your minimum frame rate MUST drop bellow 100 f/s on that setup! Hell, it might even get bellow the 85Hz refresh rate of the monitor, or if you're really unlucky, bellow the 60 f/s which is the maximum the human eye can perceive!
It's no good unless you're frame rate NEVER drops bellow 200 f/s!
</sarcasm>
You're basing your entire opinion on integrated graphics on a PC-Chips motherboard?! PC-CHIPS?!?!
That's the same company that put fake chips on a board that pretended to be cache but didn't actually do anything at all! This is the same company that refuses to put their own name on any board that they sell for fear that someone might be able to track the things back to them!
And you were surprised that the board was crap?! It doesn't matter how good the chipset is, a sufficiently crappy job on motherboard design will fuck it up. PC-Chips made some TERRIBLE boards based on the Inel 440BX chipset (arguably the best ever PC motherboard chipset). They are quite capable of screwing up anything they touch.
Keep in mind that when this class of boards came out, the reviews were probably fantastic. I was asking for a second opinion. :)
-=fshalor
Integrated video solutions as a general class are not very good for running the newest games. Why do reviewers insist on focusing on 3d benchmarks? I read a bunch of reviews for the various ATI All-In-Wonder cards and most of them copy and paste the marketing boilerplate for unique video capture features, and then focus on game benchmarks. Who the hell is going to buy an All-In-Wonder just to play games?
An AIW costs at least $100 more than the equivalent Radeon card without the video features. It doesn't make sense to buy this card unless you are going to record video, and I finally found a couple of reviews written by people who realized this fact.
I don't think anyone is going to use integrated video primarily to play games. And I doubt any of these chipsets can't handle email and browser usage at low resolutions. So why can't someone test the things that might matter? Things like typical workstation resolutions (1280x1024, 1600x1200), video, and the TV out if there is one? These are all glaring questions for the tested chipsets.
I appreciate free hardware reviews but sometimes I wish the typical review sites weren't so focused on one aspect of computing and spent a little time trying to figure out who their audience is.
Most of the great titles for each console are exclusive, as another post here points out.
:) paid $50 for several premium NES titles. You can buy a GameCube for less than this, and most premium game titles are still $50, and have been for several years. $50 / up to 50 hours of gameplay = a pretty good deal in entertainment.
I paid $200 for my Genesis and I (or, rather, my parents
Your next point is unclear, but I suspect that poor people can more easily afford a cutting edge $200 console than a super crappy $500 computer.
Every computer game maker cares what Dell ships because that is the hardware platform for a whole lot of potential computer gamers.
There are many costs associated with console game development, and this is partly offset by the fact that current consoles have millions of deployed units which means a really popular game can easily sell millions of units. While it is possible to make a computer game cheaply it seems like most new PC games are published by huge corporations and end up costing millions.
You forgot to mention the three things that make computer gaming worthwhile: the keyboard, mouse and high resolution monitor.
Most of the best PC games rely on the flexibility of the mouse and keyboard as game controllers. First person shooters and real time strategy games just don't feel right without these controllers.
The high resolution monitor yields sharper images and makes small text readable. This is why you don't see too many successful real time strategy games or flight simulators on consoles.
I've been playing computer games since Lode Runner and King's Quest 1 came out when I was a wee young lad with a $2000 Apple IIe. Recently, I've been playing Icewind Dale, Diablo II, Fallout 1/2, Aethra, and Tactical Ops (bad_bad_leroy :-)), to name a few.
None of these games need a $400 Radeon 9700 card. They work wonderfully on my regular old Radeon 32mb, whose newest brother, the 7000, sells for around $70.
Ok, I'm not a die-hard FPS enthusiast. But I'm just as serious a gamer as anyone.
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Geez, how can you survive, your minimum frame rate MUST drop bellow 100 f/s on that setup! Hell, it might even get bellow the 85Hz refresh rate of the monitor, or if you're really unlucky, bellow the 60 f/s which is the maximum the human eye can perceive!
Mine drops way below 30fps with the GeForce 3 Ti200 when there is a lot of action on the screen (e.g. 3 bots in a close-in firefight). I suggest you try a copy of UT2003 before you make rash assumptions about the frame rates. It's *WAY* more graphics intensive than was its predecessor.
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