What is the difference between onboard & stand alone video cards ?

[Illusionist]

Just curious if anyone knows, the difference between onboard & stand alone video cards ?

Which does a person prefer ?

I create alot of graphics, using softwares like Corel Bryce, 3-D studio max, Autocad etc......

Does a stand alone video card have advanatages over onboard video ??

I have an Asus M2N68-AM SE2 motherboard, and use onboard video.

Thanks for replies.

[budz]

onboard video uses shared ram...which somewhat strains memory resources....IMHO it's better to get a separate video card if you're doing intensive graphics stuff.

i prefer using stand alone video cards for all the pc's that i build.
just my 2 freaking cents!

[edDV]

I create alot of graphics, using softwares like Corel Bryce, 3-D studio max, Autocad etc......

Those apps require openGL optimized workstation cards like NVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL. Read the software system requirements for acceptable cards.

Internal Quadro/FireGL chipsets exist for so called workstation laptops but these are very expensive. Better to use a graphics card in a desktop. Dell makes a good line of workstation laptops.
http://www.dell.com/us/en/business/notebooks/precnnb/ct.aspx?refid=precnnb&s=bsd&cs=04

[JohnnyMalaria]

It alll depends on what you are trying to do. The last system I bought had on-board graphics and it wasn't adequate for the video editing stuff I was doing (e.g., it didn't support a second display or have S-video output) and then there's the RAM issue. So I put in a nVidia card that has served me very well indeed until a few days ago. I have been setting up a home recording studio and my PC was just far too noisy (I have to have it in the same room). I determined that it was the graphic card's cooling fan. I took the card out and reverted to the on-board video. I was pleasantly surprised. For audio work it is perfectly good for the job (very little changes on the display compared to video editing/gaming). Now, if I can get an aftermarket fan for my graphics card then I'll likely put it back in. It's an nVidia 7600GS should anyone know of a replacement fan

[yoda313]

Basically internal video is adequate for simple applications like internet use, office suites, low power games.

If you want to do more powerful things like current high end games and bluray you most likely need a seperate video card. Now there are some internal graphics that are supporting hdmi out so bluray is doable with just internal graphics.

But a dedicated video card gives you more options and more power (generally speaking of course) over any given internal graphics system.

[ocgw]

Basically internal video is adequate for simple applications like internet use, office suites, low power games.

If you want to do more powerful things like current high end games and bluray you most likely need a seperate video card. Now there are some internal graphics that are supporting hdmi out so bluray is doable with just internal graphics.

But a dedicated video card gives you more options and more power (generally speaking of course) over any given internal graphics system.

While w the best OB gfx and the right software you can "pull off" smooth blu ray playback I would agree that a dedicated gfx card is preferable, and it doesn't take anything more than a $50USD gfx card to "blow away" intergrated gfx

ocgw

peace

[T-Fish]

I create alot of graphics, using softwares like Corel Bryce, 3-D studio max, Autocad etc......

Does a stand alone video card have advanatages over onboard video ??

rendering something in 3dmax would not make a difference (its a cpu task), but rotating the viewport
with a highpoly object wouldn't lag

[usually_quiet]

Onboard graphics are improving. While newer video cards out-perform it, especially for gaming, it isn't bad, but you would probably benefit from a discrete video card with more dedicated memory.

I bought a motherboard with onboard graphics provided by a 785G chipset (Radeon HD 4200) for the system I built in September. The specs say it can handle Blu-Ray at 1080p, can upscale DVD video, and supports OpenGL 3.1 as well as DirectX 10.1. My motherboard also supports dual monitors, but only if one of them uses the VGA port. Some motherboards (including mine) now provide sideport memory for the onboard graphics, though its only 128 MB.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/chipsets/7-series-integrated/Pages/amd-785G-chipset.aspx

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/ati-radeon-hd-4200/...tications.aspx

[ocgw]

Even a cheap bargain basement gfx card that is not much better than the IGP itself helps a system tremendously by offloading work from the cpu freeing resources

ocgw

peace

[usually_quiet]

Even a cheap bargain basement gfx card that is not much better than the IGP itself helps a system tremendously by offloading work from the cpu freeing resources

ocgw

peace

The discrete card would definitely have to be more powerful than the onboard graphics for that to be true. The first chart here showing the results of a test between an IGP and a comparable entry-level discrete video card. The discrete card used more CPU resources.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page9.html

The results could be different for a test involving gaming instead of video playback, because the 780G chipset is optimized for video playback. If someone wants onboard graphics primarily for non-video-related tasks, other reviews I have seen indicate the 790G chipset performs slightly better there than either the 780G or 785G.

I wanted a good on-board chipset for video playback, and focused my research on AMD, since they were deemed to be a bit better in that respect. I don't know how NVIDIA's on-board grahics chipsets or Intel's compare to AMD's in other areas.

[Edit] I was looking to build an inexpensive system that didn't generate a lot of heat and would fit in a small case, but would still allow me the opportunity to do a bit of upgrading over its lifetime. Onboard graphics were enough for me given what I wanted to do with that computer.

As long as onboard graphics meets or exceeds the recommended requirements (as opposed to the minimum requirements) for the software someone want to run, it will be good enough. When that is no longer true, most motherboards that have it also provide a slot to to add a video card.

[ocgw]

Even a cheap bargain basement gfx card that is not much better than the IGP itself helps a system tremendously by offloading work from the cpu freeing resources

ocgw

peace

The discrete card would definitely have to be more powerful than the onboard graphics for that to be true. The first chart here showing the results of a test between an IGP and a comparable entry-level discrete video card. The discrete card used more CPU resources.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page9.html

The results could be different for a test involving gaming instead of video playback, because the 780G chipset is optimized for video playback. If someone wants onboard graphics primarily for non-video-related tasks, other reviews I have seen indicate the 790G chipset performs slightly better there than either the 780G or 785G.

I wanted a good on-board chipset for video playback, and focused my research on AMD, since they were deemed to be a bit better in that respect. I don't know how NVIDIA's on-board grahics chipsets or Intel's compare to AMD's in other areas.

[Edit] I was looking to build an inexpensive system that didn't generate a lot of heat and would fit in a small case, but would still allow me the opportunity to do a bit of upgrading over its lifetime. Onboard graphics were enough for me given what I wanted to do with that computer.

As long as onboard graphics meets or exceeds the recommended requirements (as opposed to the minimum requirements) for the software someone want to run, it will be good enough. When that is no longer true, most motherboards that have it also provide a slot to to add a video card.

Gotta' be somethin' wrong w/ that gfx card or its drivers

edit: Nope, pilot error, I can tell you where these guys went wrong

They used Cyberlink PowerDVD7 to play simple transport streams, that is always going to use the cpu, not a gfx cards hardware acceleration w/ PDVD

If they were playing BD or DVD mounted isos w/ hardware acceleration enabled in PDVD the story would have been totally different

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page7.html

TEST RESULTS

"First, a quick comparison between the Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H and the Asus M2A-VM HDMI to see how the chipsets compare. In our M2A-VM review we used a X2 BE-2400, so the X2 4850e was underclocked to the same clock speed (2.3Ghz) to make a more fair comparison. They are both 65nm processors with a thermal design power of 45W. We also used Windows Media Player for playback (we've since acquired a Blu Ray drive and are now using PowerDVD to take properly take advantage of ATI's UVD/AVIVO and nVidia PureVideo technology) — the last time we will do so, just for comparison purposes. The rest of the hardware was the same, with 1GB of RAM and 128MB assigned to video memory."

Laughably they are actually surprised that a real blu ray disc was less cpu intensive than a clip

I then wonder why they didn't show the results of the dedicated gfx card playing a blu ray w/ PDVD?????

Then I saw this, they are not disinterested reviewers

"Help support this site, buy the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard from one of our affiliate retailers!"

LOL, they are trying to make sales, my previous remark about entry level gfx cards helping IGP systems and common sense still stand

ocgw

peace

[usually_quiet]

Even a cheap bargain basement gfx card that is not much better than the IGP itself helps a system tremendously by offloading work from the cpu freeing resources

ocgw

peace

The discrete card would definitely have to be more powerful than the onboard graphics for that to be true. The first chart here showing the results of a test between an IGP and a comparable entry-level discrete video card. The discrete card used more CPU resources.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page9.html

The results could be different for a test involving gaming instead of video playback, because the 780G chipset is optimized for video playback. If someone wants onboard graphics primarily for non-video-related tasks, other reviews I have seen indicate the 790G chipset performs slightly better there than either the 780G or 785G.

I wanted a good on-board chipset for video playback, and focused my research on AMD, since they were deemed to be a bit better in that respect. I don't know how NVIDIA's on-board grahics chipsets or Intel's compare to AMD's in other areas.

[Edit] I was looking to build an inexpensive system that didn't generate a lot of heat and would fit in a small case, but would still allow me the opportunity to do a bit of upgrading over its lifetime. Onboard graphics were enough for me given what I wanted to do with that computer.

As long as onboard graphics meets or exceeds the recommended requirements (as opposed to the minimum requirements) for the software someone want to run, it will be good enough. When that is no longer true, most motherboards that have it also provide a slot to to add a video card.

Gotta' be somethin' wrong w/ that gfx card or its drivers

edit: Nope, pilot error, I can tell you where these guys went wrong

They used Cyberlink PowerDVD7 to play simple transport streams, that is always going to use the cpu, not a gfx cards hardware acceleration w/ PDVD

If they were playing BD or DVD mounted isos w/ hardware acceleration enabled in PDVD the story would have been totally different

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page7.html

TEST RESULTS

"First, a quick comparison between the Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H and the Asus M2A-VM HDMI to see how the chipsets compare. In our M2A-VM review we used a X2 BE-2400, so the X2 4850e was underclocked to the same clock speed (2.3Ghz) to make a more fair comparison. They are both 65nm processors with a thermal design power of 45W. We also used Windows Media Player for playback (we've since acquired a Blu Ray drive and are now using PowerDVD to take properly take advantage of ATI's UVD/AVIVO and nVidia PureVideo technology) — the last time we will do so, just for comparison purposes. The rest of the hardware was the same, with 1GB of RAM and 128MB assigned to video memory."

Laughably they are actually surprised that a real blu ray disc was less cpu intensive than a clip

I then wonder why they didn't show the results of the dedicated gfx card playing a blu ray w/ PDVD?????

Then I saw this, they are not disinterested reviewers

"Help support this site, buy the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard from one of our affiliate retailers!"

LOL, they are trying to make sales, my previous remark about entry level gfx cards helping IGP systems and common sense still stand

ocgw

peace

I beleive they did use PowerDVD 7 to the test Blu-Ray playback for both the discrete graphics card and the onboard graphics. I understood that paragraph differently than you did, that they had used Windows Media Player (and for the last time) when doing the testing for a previous review about the Asus M2A-VM. They describe their test setup as http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page6.html as follows:

"We use a variety of H.264/VC-1 clips encoded for playback on the PC as well as one actual Blu Ray title. The clips are played with PowerDVD 7 and a CPU usage graph is created by the Windows Task Manger for analysis to determine the approximate mean and peak CPU usage. High CPU usage is indicative of poor video decoding ability on the part of the integrated graphics subsystem. If the video skips or freezes, we conclude the board's IGP (in conjunction with the processor) is adequate to decompress the clip."

WMP doen't play Blu-Ray discs, so they would have had to use PowerDVD 7. They did test the discrete card with Blu-Ray. The chart on http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page8.html has a row showing the results for both the discrete card and the onboard video.

You've never seen a website ask people to patronize their sponsors before? I'll agree there are better ways of making such a request, but that is all they are doing. I seriously doubt they get a kickback for every GA-MA78GM-S2H sold.

I am not sure how your position on this is just common sense. Maybe you should explain for the benefit of people like myself. My understanding is that with current motherboards an onboard graphics chip shares system memory, but is otherwise just like a discrete video card, with it's own GPU and PCIe bus. If the GPU is adequate for the task it is performing, the CPU would come into play only for memory management, and that should be very minor.

[ocgw]

Even a cheap bargain basement gfx card that is not much better than the IGP itself helps a system tremendously by offloading work from the cpu freeing resources

ocgw

peace

The discrete card would definitely have to be more powerful than the onboard graphics for that to be true. The first chart here showing the results of a test between an IGP and a comparable entry-level discrete video card. The discrete card used more CPU resources.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page9.html

The results could be different for a test involving gaming instead of video playback, because the 780G chipset is optimized for video playback. If someone wants onboard graphics primarily for non-video-related tasks, other reviews I have seen indicate the 790G chipset performs slightly better there than either the 780G or 785G.

I wanted a good on-board chipset for video playback, and focused my research on AMD, since they were deemed to be a bit better in that respect. I don't know how NVIDIA's on-board grahics chipsets or Intel's compare to AMD's in other areas.

[Edit] I was looking to build an inexpensive system that didn't generate a lot of heat and would fit in a small case, but would still allow me the opportunity to do a bit of upgrading over its lifetime. Onboard graphics were enough for me given what I wanted to do with that computer.

As long as onboard graphics meets or exceeds the recommended requirements (as opposed to the minimum requirements) for the software someone want to run, it will be good enough. When that is no longer true, most motherboards that have it also provide a slot to to add a video card.

Gotta' be somethin' wrong w/ that gfx card or its drivers

edit: Nope, pilot error, I can tell you where these guys went wrong

They used Cyberlink PowerDVD7 to play simple transport streams, that is always going to use the cpu, not a gfx cards hardware acceleration w/ PDVD

If they were playing BD or DVD mounted isos w/ hardware acceleration enabled in PDVD the story would have been totally different

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page7.html

TEST RESULTS

"First, a quick comparison between the Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H and the Asus M2A-VM HDMI to see how the chipsets compare. In our M2A-VM review we used a X2 BE-2400, so the X2 4850e was underclocked to the same clock speed (2.3Ghz) to make a more fair comparison. They are both 65nm processors with a thermal design power of 45W. We also used Windows Media Player for playback (we've since acquired a Blu Ray drive and are now using PowerDVD to take properly take advantage of ATI's UVD/AVIVO and nVidia PureVideo technology) — the last time we will do so, just for comparison purposes. The rest of the hardware was the same, with 1GB of RAM and 128MB assigned to video memory."

Laughably they are actually surprised that a real blu ray disc was less cpu intensive than a clip

I then wonder why they didn't show the results of the dedicated gfx card playing a blu ray w/ PDVD?????

Then I saw this, they are not disinterested reviewers

"Help support this site, buy the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard from one of our affiliate retailers!"

LOL, they are trying to make sales, my previous remark about entry level gfx cards helping IGP systems and common sense still stand

ocgw

peace

I beleive they did use PowerDVD 7 to the test Blu-Ray playback for both the discrete graphics card and the onboard graphics. I understood that paragraph differently than you did, that they had used Windows Media Player (and for the last time) when doing the testing for a previous review about the Asus M2A-VM. They describe their test setup as http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page6.html as follows:

"We use a variety of H.264/VC-1 clips encoded for playback on the PC as well as one actual Blu Ray title. The clips are played with PowerDVD 7 and a CPU usage graph is created by the Windows Task Manger for analysis to determine the approximate mean and peak CPU usage. High CPU usage is indicative of poor video decoding ability on the part of the integrated graphics subsystem. If the video skips or freezes, we conclude the board's IGP (in conjunction with the processor) is adequate to decompress the clip."

WMP doen't play Blu-Ray discs, so they would have had to use PowerDVD 7. They did test the discrete card with Blu-Ray. The chart on http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page8.html has a row showing the results for both the discrete card and the onboard video.

You've never seen a website ask people to patronize their sponsors before? I'll agree there are better ways of making such a request, but that is all they are doing. I seriously doubt they get a kickback for every GA-MA78GM-S2H sold.

I am not sure how your position on this is just common sense. Maybe you should explain for the benefit of people like myself. My understanding is that with current motherboards an onboard graphics chip shares system memory, but is otherwise just like a discrete video card, with it's own GPU and PCIe bus. If the GPU is adequate for the task it is performing, the CPU would come into play only for memory management, and that should be very minor.

Exactly, common sense dictates that w/ dedicated gfx employed cpu usage should be minor, but their graphs show exactly the opposite, and even if the dedicated gfx is no better than the OB gfx it would @ least "lighten the load" for the cpu

They said "they have since" acquired PDVD, they were playing a h.264 (probably .m2ts) file, probably from a blu ray in the first graph, it never says it is a blu ray

The 2nd graph on page 7 is after they acquired PDVD and a blu ray drive and convienently omits dedicated gfx results for blu ray and page 8 is all OB gfx

they never show results for blu ray w/ dedicated gfx and PDVD, probably didn't give them the results they were looking for



Dedicated gfx w/ PDVD, TMT, or WinDVD is the best way to ease usage of the cpu when playing blu ray discs or isos (this isn't news) and they never show it because they are trying to show IGP mobos in a positive light in comparison to dedicated gfx

I have 3000 series IGP on 1 PC and 4000 series IGP on another PC, while IGP is much improved, I still go w/ dedicated gfx cards on all my PC's

btw, noone said anything about "kickbacks", I assume profits from direct sales

ocgw

peace

[usually_quiet]

@ogcw - The quoting is getting out of hand, so I'm just going to make as brief a reply as I can.

It is the chart on http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page9.html that shows results for both the discrete card and the onboard video using the Gigabyte MA78GM motherboard only. I mistakenly referenced the page 8 of the article instead of page 9. Sorry about that.

I still think they used an actual disc, a Blu-Ray drive and Power DVD 7 for the Blu Ray test results shown on page 9.

As far as the website making direct sales... I looked evidence of retail operations associated with the Silent PC Review. but as far as I can tell that website isn't selling any hardware directly, except for their used test samples. I tried their "shopping engine", which links to Price Grabber. As expected, NewEgg and other familar retailers were listed as places to buy the product I chose.

They were also not trying to prove that the 780G is better than the discrete video card used for the test. They were testing AMD's Hybrid CrossFire feature, which required them to use a Radeon HD 3450 or HD 3570 based graphics card for the test. Although hybrid Crossfire is intended to improve gaming performance for those discrete video cards, a quiet PC would appeal more to HTPC enthusasts than to gamers. I would guess that is why they decided to use video for their testing, not games like most other reviews for 780G chip set motherboards.

I looked at the specs for the 780G GPU and the ATI Radeon HD 3400 Series GPU and they have a lot of features in common when it comes to video playback. The performace of the discrete card and the igp should be closer. Maybe they received a bad discrete card as you said.

These are the specs for the 780G's Radeon HD 3200 GPU: http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/chipsets/7-series-integrated/Pages/amd-780g-chipset.aspx

These are the specs for the ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 Series GPU
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-3000/hd-3400/Pages/ati-r...fications.aspx

[edDV]

I create alot of graphics, using softwares like Corel Bryce, 3-D studio max, Autocad etc......

Does a stand alone video card have advanatages over onboard video ??

rendering something in 3dmax would not make a difference (its a cpu task), but rotating the viewport
with a highpoly object wouldn't lag

But according to Autodesk, even 3D Studio Max (now known as 3ds Max) needs a Quadro or FireGL card.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=13606754

[ocgw]

@ogcw - The quoting is getting out of hand, so I'm just going to make as brief a reply as I can.

It is the chart on http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page9.html that shows results for both the discrete card and the onboard video using the Gigabyte MA78GM motherboard only. I mistakenly referenced the page 8 of the article instead of page 9. Sorry about that.

I still think they used an actual disc, a Blu-Ray drive and Power DVD 7 for the Blu Ray test results shown on page 9.

As far as the website making direct sales... I looked evidence of retail operations associated with the Silent PC Review. but as far as I can tell that website isn't selling any hardware directly, except for their used test samples. I tried their "shopping engine", which links to Price Grabber. As expected, NewEgg and other familar retailers were listed as places to buy the product I chose.

They were also not trying to prove that the 780G is better than the discrete video card used for the test. They were testing AMD's Hybrid CrossFire feature, which required them to use a Radeon HD 3450 or HD 3570 based graphics card for the test. Although hybrid Crossfire is intended to improve gaming performance for those discrete video cards, a quiet PC would appeal more to HTPC enthusasts than to gamers. I would guess that is why they decided to use video for their testing, not games like most other reviews for 780G chip set motherboards.

I looked at the specs for the 780G GPU and the ATI Radeon HD 3400 Series GPU and they have a lot of features in common when it comes to video playback. The performace of the discrete card and the igp should be closer. Maybe they received a bad discrete card as you said.

These are the specs for the 780G's Radeon HD 3200 GPU: http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/chipsets/7-series-integrated/Pages/amd-780g-chipset.aspx

These are the specs for the ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 Series GPU
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-3000/hd-3400/Pages/ati-r...fications.aspx

Oh yeah, I see the graph on page 9 now lol

Maybe that card is compromised by being passively cooled and a 4350 w/ active cooling would have faired much better

I admit I could be wrong about their motives but I still question the validity of their results

No way adding a gfx card to your system should "hurt" your PC's performance imho

look @ page 10

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article807-page10.html

The descrete gfx is clearly superior in the gaming benchmarks

you are probably right about the these IGP's being optimized for video playback

But i will tell you this, my daughters PC has 3000 series IGP and I didn't think it was smooth and stutter free enough @ 720p so I added a $50USD 4650 and now her PC is flawless playing blu rays streamed from my home network server

remember that the 4350 is a $35USD gfx solution

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121310 (80 stream processors)

for an extra $15USD you can get a 4650 and blow the doors off of any IGP

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131178 ((320 stream processors)

I bought my daughter this fine Sapphire Radeon 512mb 4650 for $50USD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102829

Windows experience went from 2.2 w/ 3000 series IGP to 5.4 w/ the $50 buck card

ocgw

peace

[T-Fish]

@edDV.. i can tell you from experience, that that's not true.

i don't use it anymore, but 3ds max v6 even runs on an ati x300 lol.
of course as your polycount goes up, it starts to lag when you rotate the viewport, but
thats about it. it certainly doesn't hurt to have one of those workstation cards, but if you
don't plan on doing models with millions of polys, you're ok with an ordinary card.

[edDV]

I agree it will run. But it all depends on project complexity.

The OP is still silent.

[usually_quiet]

But i will tell you this, my daughters PC has 3000 series IGP and I didn't think it was smooth and stutter free enough @ 720p so I added a $50USD 4650 and now her PC is flawless playing blu rays streamed from my home network server

remember that the 4350 is a $35USD gfx solution

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121310 (80 stream processors)

for an extra $15USD you can get a 4650 and blow the doors off of any IGP

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131178 ((320 stream processors)

I bought my daughter this fine Sapphire Radeon 512mb 4650 for $50USD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102829

Windows experience went from 2.2 w/ 3000 series IGP to 5.4 w/ the $50 buck card

ocgw

peace

After I saw the favorable reviews on the 785G, I reallocated the money I would have spent on a video card ($50 actually was my limit) among the other components.

With the 785G chipset, combined with an Athlon II X2 250 Regor CPU, and 2 GB of DDR3 system memory, my PC received a 4.1 Windows experience rating for gaming graphics, and 4.4 for Aero. That's plenty good enough for anything I do now. Adding a dscrete graphics card is near the bottom of my list of future improvements.

I don't game worth mentioning, or model 3D objects, or run any software that can make use of the GPU to assist the CPU. A discrete card with a more powerful GPU and some memory of its own would be helpful there.