Integrated video (VIA VT8235~ish) or TNT2 with 16mb of ram?

[acemcmac]

It' my HT pc... it's been running fine with integrated video, and until I find my soldering iron, more powerful hardware is unavailable. Does anyone think the TNT2 would be an improvement?

CARD (CIRCUIT), GRAPHICS, VIDEO, 16MB, TNT2, PROFESSIONAL

it's a pull from an OptiPlex GX150, Ship Date: 10/11/2001

 

[BassBomb]

it depends on what your integrated was...

What do you mean by soldering iron?

if you can, what i would do is grab a decent low/midrange card so you can offload alot of your cpu work to your gpu

 

[Schadenfroh]

I thought that the VT8235 was just a south bridge chip. Are you sure you do not have some kind of S3 video chip on that thing?

 

[Falloutboy]

pretty sure intergrated is better

 

[beserker15]

This is for like athlon series right? I would actually say the tnt2 is better since basically only the nforce and above igps were better. The onboard on an nforce was what, an mx440 which was slower than the actual mx440 which is tied with a fast geforce 2 which is 1 or 2 generations above a tnt2? lol, anyways, unless your onboard is some kinda radeon or geforce, it's probably slower.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: Falloutboy
pretty sure intergrated is better

The word is "integrated", thank you.

The VIA unit will certainly be lots faster in 2D, and has the better video application support (DVD decode assist, video scalers etc.). In 3D, they're both equally useless in speed, but the VIA unit at least has actively maintained drivers.

 

[Stumps]

hmmm, depending on exactly what VIA northbridge is used on your mobo, the TNT2 should be faster in 3D(marginally)...however if your boards features the KM266/KM400 northbridge's then the integrated VIA(S3) is considerably faster and has a better DVD decoder built in, IIRC the TNT2 doesn't have any reall DVD decoders built into the die and has to rely on an additional hardware or software decoder to do the job.

TNT2's also generate considerably more heat than the KM400 also.

Drivers should be fairly current for the VIA NB however the TNT2's most recent drivers maybe 2-3 years old.

 

[acemcmac]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
I thought that the VT8235 was just a south bridge chip. Are you sure you do not have some kind of S3 video chip on that thing?

Actually, you are correct. For some reason I was under the impression that integrated video on really low end motherboards would be found on the southbridge. It is an S3 afterall...

I have a 9800AIW with an artic cooler that has a snapped power lead for the artic cooler that I need to repair. As soon as I find my tools, this whole discussion will be irrelevant. I think the TNT2 needs to stay on my desk if it's going to suffer in DVD acceleration compared to onboard :laugh:

Fun brain exercise though

Thanks guys.

 

[PingSpike]

I usually just want to free up the system ram the onboard solution is using so I stick a cheap TNT2 in there. But I guess it depends on what you're doing.

 

[Peter]

Given how little system RAM costs, and also given that you can set today's VIA solutions to use just 16 MBytes, this really isn't an issue anymore.

Sending lots of bandwidth down to the slowest bus in the system (PCI) however does pose a problem - it's hogging bandwidth the system could very well use for other things like IDE, SATA, audio, USB and whatever else a HTPC normally is busy with.

Long story short: The VIA "Unichrome" graphics engine is very well capable of everything the typical HTPC requires, as long as it's 2D - and if it's 3D, the TNT2 card will be equally useless.

Keep it simple.

"KM266pro" btw. is actually KM400, the latest integrated-VGA chipset for socket A.