oh well, all those experts ...
AC97 is a digital audio bus, used to interconnect sound engines and analog codecs. The whole spectrum of sound solutions uses it, from Soundblaster Audigy down to the most primitve, CPU driven solutions.
Onboard sound engines might be from any category. Someone saying "the mainboard uses AC97 sound" might as well say "I'm clueless". There are intelligent chipset integrated solutions (like Trident 4D-Wave found in ALi and SiS chipsets) as well as CPU driven separate PCI chips (like that SB-128).
Integrated graphics units usually live in system RAM, which makes them bandwidth limited. So? There are enough people out there who never do any 3D gaming, and if they do, are happy enough at low resolutions - after all, any given game console on your TV uses even lower resolutions.
Like it or not, these boards do have their market. A huge big market. Problem with folks like PC166 is they didn't buy a system that suits their needs and then come here to rant about the "crap" they bought, rather than slap themselves for not thinking beforehand.
regards, Peter