in theory, yes no prob. In practice, it's usually sh*t. Are they good onboard graphics or just ordinary desktop cr*p? Don't forget there are other system issues to consider that might cause bottlenecking.

you should of course have a nice fast hdd, decent cpu and mobo, good cooling, stable Windows install, defrag regularly, pref be on NTFS, and have your system optimized for performance, and DX9b of course. Then if you've got decent onboard graphics, open up your agp aperture in the bios some more, then in Windows optimise your Direct3d and OpenGL settings for performance and application controlled. then you "should" be ok.

Myself I hate onboard graphics and I won't use them, no matter how good the blurb says they are.

@Taw, Appreciate that. I am deciding weather to upgrade the card or not.
Whole stats are:
1.58 ghz
768 Ram
64Mg video 420 card
DX9.0b
Whole computer is 2 years old
Same for 60 gb hdd with 40gb hdd slave back up

Thinking of going to a 256mg lower end card, but don't like the idea of no fan on it

Finalday

Hinneh / I / Bo / Mahar... /Keith Green\ (1953-1983)

no Mustie you can open up the system to allocate more ram for video sh*t, you can open up AGP aperture memory alloc and also edit these in a lot of vga adapter adv settings, esp for stuff like tectures. But your VRAM is still limited to whats been allocated for it to emulate as VRAM, so 64mb graphics remain 64mb graphics even though youve opened up 256 for the agp aperture and up to 384 with the vid-drivers. thats why you need decent graphics onboard to start with. Some of this nForce stuff is supposed to be good and some 8X boards have crackin ATi Raddy vid chipsets onboard using main RAM

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Thinking of going to a 256mg lower end card, but don't like the idea of no fan on it

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Why? Passive cooling is (as Taw would say) fookin ace. Problem is GPU's (and CPU's) run so frickin hot these days that fans are a necessary evil. I hate any moving parts in a PC, they are usually the first things to crap out.

As for your purchase, I would cut the RAM in half to 128Mb and spend the extra dollars on a faster GPU. Unless you like running games at over 1024x768 the need for extra RAM probably won't outweigh the additional grunt in most cases.


EDIT: Sorry Taw, deleted that post off when I realised that wasn't what Final day was asking. Interesting though.

Edited by - Mustang on 3/6/2004 3:19:35 PM

@Mustang, I have the 420 card now with a fan and 2-3 hours of Morrowind or Freelancer will cause the computer to restart. If I cool it during play, air blast, it will play ok. That is one reason I want to upgrade. I figure the fan will assist the cooling a bit more than just a heatsink. I don't have any extra fans on the case. Just the vid card and the processer and power supply.

Finalday

Hinneh / I / Bo / Mahar... /Keith Green\ (1953-1983)

That's the beauty of passive cooling though it doesn't run hot enough to require fans. Still keeping your beast cool should be a top priority when getting new gear, you might even want to consider getting yourself a new case with a couple of intake and exhaust fans.

Sounds like your current vid card has some serious cooling issues though. If the fan is working but your still having to airblast it, there's something definately wrong there. I wouldn't be suprised if your heat sink isn't sitting flush on your GPU. Either that or your ambient temperature of your PC room is extremely high.

Ok, the $64,000 question. The case is a compaq brand. Can I get a generic case and transfer the whole shooting match over to it, adding the extra fans?

Edited by - Finalday on 3/6/2004 3:42:09 PM

Shared RAM is not a good idea, especially since Windows and games need around 512MB of RAM as a bare minimum, more like 1GB. Besides, modern graphics cards have G-DDR2 which is a hell of a lot faster than DDR, and they are now using G-DDR3.

Final, you can transfer your system to a new case, as long as it has the standard dimensions of an ATX/AT board, and standard power connectors, etc. I don't anticipate any problems however. Do you want some good cases?

Passive cooling is great, but to get something good enough to keep you PC cool, you're paying through the nose, as they say.

@Esq, Compusa, local computer whs, has a lot of cases from mini to sever. I may get one there with a slight upgrade in power supply(+50 watts). Be the first time I have done a swap over. Have upgraded items before but never all, in a switch over. A challenge I look forward to.

Finalday

Hinneh / I / Bo / Mahar... /Keith Green\ (1953-1983)

uh-oh, Compaq case and bits. is there a fookin great bar of metal across the mobo? they try to make it so you can't shift the bits out.

@Taw, no, there is no bar accross the board. Nothing appearing to be in the way.

Finalday

Hinneh / I / Bo / Mahar... /Keith Green\ (1953-1983)

Edited by - Finalday on 3/7/2004 8:29:47 AM

lucky man. traditionally Compaq used to make upgrades and stripouts murder. check the ram doesnt have a funny pin arrangement.

@Taw

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check the ram doesnt have a funny pin arrangement.

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Funny Pin? My current ram is 2 strips of 2700 DDR - 1 is 512 and 1 is 256. If I switch the Mob, will that matter any?

Finalday

Hinneh / I / Bo / Mahar... /Keith Green\ (1953-1983)

sometimes Compaq ram has a non-standard pin array, that's all. keeps the corporate buyers stuck with Compaq, you see.

420 graphics at 64mb will chog a bit, even on an optimized system. This for gaming, yeh? Disable it and get a Raddy 9600pro or XT. You can thank me later!

my esteemed techy colleagues will agree with me on this I'm sure. if you were using 128mb nForce on a 2ghz+ cpu then that would be ok, but I wouldn't feel happy letting you struggle to get anything out of a 64mb 420, even with everything i said above. I'd consider 64mb graphics entry level for cheap and cheerfuls, and basic office desktops.