onboard vga is such a burden

[RobCur]

many reason to avoid, i don't care how poor you are, saving 20-30 bucks for a cheap external vga is just no excuses...not to mention onboard vga based mobo cost more so it pretty much pay for itself if you pay less for mobo and use that toward a vga card for 2-4 times performance.

1. slow down your memory performance greatly
2. reduces stability
3. most onboard manufacturer take out agp port thinking that onboard vga is superior to agp card!
4. generic or standard dimm/ddr will not do, you pay less for mobo now you gotta pay more for high quality ram or it will crash often.
5. i have a few board that fried itself because it didn't like my generic dimm lol.
6. very poor investment, you be better off with any board that don't have video and an agp slot instead. for christ's sake, never buy anything that shares bandwidth with your dimm because the cpu need at least 100 percent to function at maximum speed.
onboard audio/lan seem to be ok since it doesn't require much resources like video.

 

[DieHardware]

not to mention onboard vga based mobo cost more

For the most part integrated is cheaper.

never buy anything that shares bandwidth with your dimm because the cpu need at least 100 percent to function at maximum speed

Not in the case of Nforce2.

 

[mechBgon]

Interesting rant, but I don't agree with the conclusions. There's always the Honey Factor, where you are finally done with the system and give it to your honey so you can upgrade without her/him getting upset at you. Pull out your nice AGP card and let her/him use the onboard video.

With most of today's better systems, buying cheapie generic RAM or power supplies is just asking for trouble, doesn't matter if they have onboard video or not. The rest of your complaints are non-issues with an nForce2-based system, which has twice the bandwidth that the CPU itself can make use of.

If I already had a video card that was better than the onboard GeForce4MX-ish one in the nForce2 IGP boards, then maybe there would be no point in having it, other than the Honey Factor, but the fact is, the onboard video has about twice the gaming performance of my old AGP card, so it's hard to turn it down for just $15 extra.

Bottom line, the people who would be significantly impacted by onboard video are going to be using an add-in card anyway, unless they were foolish enough to buy a pre-built system with an i845GL motherboard or something

 

[Vette73]

As others have said these are not really problems for the nForce2 IGP boards. Now the Intel ones I can see, as No agp port and not enough memory bandwith.

 

[RobCur]

high performance vga is everything when it comes to watching divx movies, if it jerk alot and lags because of onboard vga that pretty much failed as a budget system. know what i mean?
i call them disposable motherboard because that's what they are, heh. constant BSOD, sorry not paying double the price of dimm just so that this onboard vga can run stablely. heck no, it goes out the windows, you can have it if you want. i may as well let the dog play fetch with it hehe. have a nice day, i have nothing but trouble and headache and even my harddrive are slow as well. hmm you tell me man, it just marketing crap that work for some who just trying to save a few bucks say 10-20 buck. a design flaw that somehow just don't die because people just keep buying this crap and not realizing it ain't worth a penny. you could stick in pci vga but then again, it be just as slow. either way they got ya.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: RobCur
many reason to avoid, i don't care how poor you are, saving 20-30 bucks for a cheap external vga is just no excuses...not to mention onboard vga based mobo cost more so it pretty much pay for itself if you pay less for mobo and use that toward a vga card for 2-4 times performance.

1. slow down your memory performance greatly

Not usually much.

2. reduces stability

On a cheap-@$$ one, sure!

3. most onboard manufacturer take out agp port thinking that onboard vga is superior to agp card!

Don't buy them. I never will, but might get a board for someone w/ onboard video. AGP, too, though.

4. generic or standard dimm/ddr will not do, you pay less for mobo now you gotta pay more for high quality ram or it will crash often.

That has nothing to do with onboard video, and if you try to use that argument again, hit yourself in the head with a heavy book. That's a useless argument, when $60 can get you 512MB PC2700.

5. i have a few board that fried itself because it didn't like my generic dimm lol.

Pretty bad, but Kingston is cheap enough to not use generic!

6. very poor investment, you be better off with any board that don't have video and an agp slot instead. for christ's sake, never buy anything that shares bandwidth with your dimm because the cpu need at least 100 percent to function at maximum speed.

Well, from some NForce2 reviews, from real sites and users, it seems to do fine in dual-channel, unless you need a real GF3 or better.

onboard audio/lan seem to be ok since it doesn't require much resources like video.

No, but if you get cheap parts, you get what you pay for most of the time. With a TNT2m64 at $25, you don't save much going with onboard.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: RobCur
high performance vga is everything when it comes to watching divx movies, if it jerk alot and lags because of onboard vga that pretty much failed as a budget system. know what i mean?
i call them disposable motherboard because that's what they are, heh. constant BSOD, sorry not paying double the price of dimm just so that this onboard vga can run stablely. heck no, it goes out the windows, you can have it if you want. i may as well let the dog play fetch with it hehe. have a nice day, i have nothing but trouble and headache and even my harddrive are slow as well. hmm you tell me man, it just marketing crap that work for some who just trying to save a few bucks say 10-20 buck. a design flaw that somehow just don't die because people just keep buying this crap and not realizing it ain't worth a penny. you could stick in pci vga but then again, it be just as slow. either way they got ya.

I'm sorry, but it's not easy to get away with applying blanket generalizations around here

I maintain a business fleet of about 80 systems, almost all of which have onboard video. Here are my recent builds. They don't need "special" memory, I'm not using anything more "special" than Crucial PC2100, which is far from expensive. Their stability is exemplary, and they perform well too. The older systems range from onboard TNT to onboard i750, they all get the job done fine, and none of them has fancy botique memory either.

I can, and have, played UT2003 Demo on the onboard video of my own A7N266-VM (first-generation, single-channel nForce), and it's got only a fraction of the 3D performance of nForce2's onboard video. I use plain old Crucial memory in it.

From the general drift of your post, I'd say you can blame your lack of stability on cheap parts in general... boards, memory and probably power supplies too. Proper driver installation order can also make or break a system.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: RobCur
high performance vga is everything when it comes to watching divx movies, if it jerk alot and lags because of onboard vga that pretty much failed as a budget system. know what i mean?

No, I don't. K7SEM w/ a Duron (900 I think) and 512MB...no problems at all w/ DivX. That was a year or so ago, and the NForce2 seems quite a good choice.

i call them disposable motherboard because that's what they are, heh. constant BSOD, sorry not paying double the price of dimm just so that this onboard vga can run stablely.

Yeah, me neither...
When I can get 256MB for $30 and 512MB for $60, any savings you get are your problem.
I'll get cheap stuff, but not PSU and RAM.
$48 for a mobo? You got it.
$25 for PSU? Hell no.

heck no, it goes out the windows, you can have it if you want. i may as well let the dog play fetch with it hehe. have a nice day, i have nothing but trouble and headache and even my harddrive are slow as well. hmm you tell me man, it just marketing crap that work for some who just trying to save a few bucks say 10-20 buck.

Not worth it. On a $400 box, it isn't worth saving 5% to give yourself problems, when you could save that 5% going to a slower CPU, cheaper, case, slower burner, etc..

a design flaw that somehow just don't die because people just keep buying this crap and not realizing it ain't worth a penny. you could stick in pci vga but then again, it be just as slow. either way they got ya.

Oh, and no problems playing DiVX with this PCI S3 ViRGE, either. It drops frames because it is only an Athlon 700, not because it has a cheap video card, or cheap anything else (which it has a lot of, BTW).

 

[Boogak]

I've got cheapy PNY and Kbyte ($10 and free after rebates respectively, can't get cheaper than that) PC2100 memory on my $70 nForce1 board with integrated graphics and it plays DivX movies great. Also hasn't crashed once even though I leave it on 24x7. While I agree most integrated video blows, I really dig the nForce stuff.

 

[RobCur]

Someone alway said not for gaming but the true definition should be slow motion performance LOL!!! i serious everytime i called up control panel or anything that require graphical interface, it would pause for 10 sec. it doesn't matter what brand, they all about the same like intel, biostar, msi, ecs, etc. the problem is that manufacturer are too cheap,too stingy to provide vga with it's own memory chip which would cost them a few bucks or 5-10 at most for the higher end model.
If you can afford the top of the model processor why in the world would you want onboard vga just so you can feel good about saving few bucks, and you end up blowing it away at mcdonald's anyway.

i am not poor btw, i just made some horrible mistake in the past. now they are dieing left and right as if it was made to go dead after a few month. i've gotten sick and tired of buying junk because I am too cheap to pay more for quality so now I am buying mobo with agp port only, no onboard vga ever again. i don't care how cheap, i don't want it even if it's 1 buck shipped. it just ain't worth killing the performance of my processor that is already very slow compared to today's standard, they range from 1.1ghz to 1.3ghz, i have about 7 machine. 3 dead so far LOL, now I am waiting for new mobo on the way. i have alot of 8meg 2x agp card btw, like 8 sitting around doing nothing cause of these cursed onboard component. frying mobo is not my specialty but sometime it just fried itself cause it was just made that way. oh i am so angry at the biostar manufacturer, they have my money selling junk to me.
sis 6326 is the slowest vga ever, you see it really is onboard to begin with then was made into a card, that why it is so slow. but trident, ati, or anything else is much faster.
this is not a rant folk, this is a true story and is based on my real life experience.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I agree with Mech and the others on this, times have changed and IGP is becoming a great ultra budget value. I have a SL-75MRN-L setup as a F@H/family rig on my home network and using 2 512mb stick of very inexpensive Apacer 3200DDR in DC-DDR, a Barton 2500+, and the IGP I'm able to score 6000 in 3DMark2001se, and DIVX is silky smooth. As to the whole "IGP kills bandwidth" thing, It still scores high 2900's INT 2700's Float in Sandra just 175 points or so off the SL-75FRN-L SPP with identical CPU, RAM, and settings. I have the Barton@2.3ghz on just 1.632v actual, 200mhz synch mode and can overclock the core using coolbits to as far as 265-270mhz stable. It plays games like UT2K3, BF1942 (800x600), and Ghost Recon at 1024x768 32 bit and modest game settings well enough to be enjoyable (only done for testing as I game on my main system) and leaves me with a clean, open config that gets great air flow and eliminates the extra GPU producing heat and sucking down power as well. As was pointed already the DC-DDR mode produces far more bandwidth than AMD CPUs can use so there's a fair amount available to the IGP on the NF2.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: RobCur
Someone alway said not for gaming but the true definition should be slow motion performance LOL!!! i serious everytime i called up control panel or anything that require graphical interface, it would pause for 10 sec.

WTH? Something else is wrong. I've used plenty of shared video before, Intel and SiS mainly, and nothing like that. Just got a Slot1 board w/ SiS onboard video, even...almost 6 years old, and doing great.

it doesn't matter what brand, they all about the same like intel, biostar, msi, ecs, etc. the problem is that manufacturer are too cheap,too stingy to provide vga with it's own memory chip which would cost them a few bucks or 5-10 at most for the higher end model.
If you can afford the top of the model processor why in the world would you want onboard vga just so you can feel good about saving few bucks, and you end up blowing it away at mcdonald's anyway.

If you can afford a top of the line CPU, you can pay $50 for video. Period.

i am not poor btw, i just made some horrible mistake in the past. now they are dieing left and right as if it was made to go dead after a few month. i've gotten sick and tired of buying junk because I am too cheap to pay more for quality so now I am buying mobo with agp port only, no onboard vga ever again.

...you know you can get both...even cheap. K7SEM again.

i don't care how cheap, i don't want it even if it's 1 buck shipped. it just ain't worth killing the performance of my processor that is already very slow compared to today's standard, they range from 1.1ghz to 1.3ghz, i have about 7 machine. 3 dead so far LOL, now I am waiting for new mobo on the way. i have alot of 8meg 2x agp card btw, like 8 sitting around doing nothing cause of these cursed onboard component. frying mobo is not my specialty but sometime it just fried itself cause it was just made that way. oh i am so angry at the biostar manufacturer, they have my money selling junk to me.
sis 6326 is the slowest vga ever, you see it really is onboard to begin with then was made into a card, that why it is so slow. but trident, ati, or anything else is much faster.
this is not a rant folk, this is a true story and is based on my real life experience.

No, it is a rant. Saving money and sacrificing quality at the same time is bad.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: RobCureverytime i called up control panel or anything that require graphical interface, it would pause for 10 sec.

I could see that happening with a system with Win98, only 128Mb of RAM, and useless junk running in the background, especially if you had antivirus software going at the same time. A slow hard drive would compound that. Spyware is also known for slowing and destabilizing systems, try running AdAware from www.lavasoft.de (it's free).

I wish I could've sat you down at the original Turbo (now upgraded and called Turbo II). It used the A7N266-VM motherboard, complete with onboard video, 6-channel audio and LAN, and it was a ripper! Stuff popped onto the screen so fast... and the key isn't the video, or separate video, or extra-fancy RAM, or the very latest motherboard (it wasn't, even then) or even an ultra-fast CPU. It's a combination of having a sufficient quantity of RAM for Windows to work with, a clean installation of Windows without excess software running...

...and preferably the fastest hard drive in existence for when you do need data off the hard drive. And at the time I bought it, my Cheetah X15-36LP SCSI hard drive was paws-down the fastest hard drive available, simply annihilated the very finest IDE hard drives like they were kiddie toys. You want to see the Control Panel...? How fast can you blink?

Now even the mighty X15-36LP has to take a back seat to the Fujitsu MAS-series drives... might get me one o' thems soon here.

EDIT: DAPUNISHER, 6000 3DMark2001! Dasm, that is over triple what my A7N266-VM gets with onboard, and even my 32Mb GF2 GTS-V only does about 3600! I only have a 1600+ for propulsion, but still... I might have to snag an IGP board. 6000.... :Q

 

[Peter]

Well, picking the right system for a given task is an art.

Onboard video isn't for everyone - yet incredibly many people are very well served by such a minimal system.
Of course this is the kind of computer user that would never turn up on a message board like this one here. Typically those systems never ever get upgraded the least bit, beyond maybe a RAM expansion and if things really get tough, a bigger HDD or an added burner.
I still have customers that are on 1998 mainboards with integrated SiS 2D VGA, who are perfectly happy with it. Why? Because in normal everyday computing from word processing to internet browsing and email, the performance delta between a 200 MHz Cyrix MII box with integrated VGA and a Pentium-4 2 GHz plus Radeon 9800 simply doesn't make ANY difference at all.

 

[batmanuel]

[qEDIT: DAPUNISHER, 6000 3DMark2001! Dasm, that is over triple what my A7N266-VM gets with onboard, and even my 32Mb GF2 GTS-V only does about 3600! I only have a 1600+ for propulsion, but still... I might have to snag an IGP board. 6000.... :Q[/quote]

That is about par for the IGP chipset. My friend's system with an MSI IGP motherboard scored around 4500 with two sticks of 512 PC2100 and and AXP 2200+, so DAPUNISHER's scores are about what I'd exprect with the added bandwidth of everything runnning at 333 MHz, plus the extra cache of the Barton. As I've tried to explain in another thread, the NF2 IGP chipset is great. It is no wonder Intel doesn't want to sell them a P4 license - nVidia would take over the whole low-end PC market.

It is really sad how awful some of those low-end Intel systems are. I had a sales associate pop open the side of one of those HP Pavilion PC's in the store just to see how sad it was (the ones that come bundled with a 17" monitor, the 515 model). The processor wasn't bad, a 2.2 GHz Celeron, and it had DDR, but it was using the Intel Extreme Graphics for onboard video. To add insult to injury, you could see the silkscreen of where the AGP port would have gone on the motherboard if HP had just opted to spend a few bucks more for the 845G instead of the GL. Sure it is a fine system for someone who just surfs the web and does office apps, but you totally cut yourself off from even the simplest games (the Harry Potter game uses the original UT engine). People on a budget would be so much more well served with an NF2 IGP board, but all you can find in the retail stores are Intel boxes because that brand name sells to the average consumer. It is just sad to see people ripped off by their own ignorance. I just can't believe that people spend thousands of dollars on computers without doing a LITTLE research before shopping for one.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Actually batmanuel (cool name BTW, from the Tick series right?) I have the 4th highest score for the NF2 chipset IGP in the Futuremark database and I'm running at 200 synch mode DC-DDR and that score was with the IGP core overclocked to 260mhz using coolbits and the 44.03's. Many can't break 5500 even with very similar setups so 6000 is actually a bit high.

 

[RobCur]

i am buying a few more pci vga card for my other computer that is lagging so bad, and notice something funny as well. onboard vga is very flaky, my screen would flicker alot WTF? even at 85mhz refresh rate... goes to show you that it has too many drawback, one solution is to buy a new mobo with onboard again since you think you are getting the best deal in town lol. only to find that it flickers again. hmm some never learn, some do like me. and i bought so many cause it was cheap, but sure add up alot when you have 7 computers. 4 dead so far, 3 more to go then it will be replace with better mobo that has dedicated agp port which is something thats been around for 10 years or so. why i keep buying junk? cause cheap stuff are crap and don't last too long heck even ancient celeron running at 366mhz have better vga performance when equipped with voodoo card LOL vs my 1.2ghz celeron t that seem to be able to crunch number faster but that's all it good for oh well.

 

[mechBgon]

Out of curiosity, what brand and model of power supplies and motherboards have you been having these problems with, precisely?

 

[batmanuel]

DAPUNISHER:
Didn't realize how much you pushed your setup. That's pretty damn impressive. Never even knew you could OC the IGP (figured it would screw up the board since the chip also acted as the system northbridge). Just shows you the tiny overclocking balls I have. Wow.

Yeah, I admit it I am a Tick fan. Just wished the live-action series would have gotten a better home at a cable channel like FX where quirky shows like that are given a chance find an audience. Heck, during its run on Fox, I missed half the episodes because they kept changing the time and day around so often (not to mention all the time it was preempted). I was initially put off by the fact that Die Fledermaus was not going to be showing up, but Batmanuel made a great replacement.

 

[amcdonald]

Robcur... your attitude is outdated.
Buy an nforce/nforce2 integrated system and get over it.
I've built many systems (A7N266-VM, 8rga+) using integrated graphics and NONE of them have failed in the slightest way.
No BSOD. No flaky video reaction. No memory bandwith restriction.

 

[Pauli]

RobCur, your rant is out of line. You are making a broad generalization based on your VERY LIMITED experience and then trying to convince everyone here that you are right. GIVE IT UP ALREADY! Heck, you can't even put together a coherent sentence. Nobody here agrees with you. Go away and live in that little narrow-minded cave that you live in. Please.

 

[onelin]

For the record, I just picked up an Intel D865GLCLK board with onboard video and it is awesome. I loved being able to setup my OS before removing my AGP card from my old system (as I needed to send all the data over from it's hard drive, and this system is Micro ATX with room for one hard drive). I use a Geforce4 Ti4400 in it and when I'm done with it I can use it as a server that has no need for it's own videocard.

 

[RobCur]

easy man, easy i am having a very hard time right now and I dont need any more headaches.
plz be more considerate of others who are less fortunate then you. i spend $$$ more then you can count your money in a billion years. scam after scam, it just never stop unless i give up computer hobby cause it really sucks. what you paid now is worthless in less then a year, very poor investment. btw, i never give up so their don't think i just roll over and die?! jesus christ. you haven't learned that I have gone throught hell to get those 7 computer of mine working in top shape and here you hillbillies who has everything in a silver spoon and don't understand nothing. oh well, i am not even talking to you, just a mirror in front of me that i am not getting an answer.

Originally posted by: Pauli
RobCur, your rant is out of line. You are making a broad generalization based on your VERY LIMITED experience and then trying to convince everyone here that you are right. GIVE IT UP ALREADY! Heck, you can't even put together a coherent sentence. Nobody here agrees with you. Go away and live in that little narrow-minded cave that you live in. Please.

 

[mechBgon]

If you're asking for help, then you're in Help Central Name your components by brand and model as much as possible, say what your symptoms are and what you've tried, give us the scoop on what operating system you're running, and we're on the way. Lots of nice people to help you here if you actually want help. If you want to convince us that all onboard VGA is bad, we're kind of a tough crowd

As a general rule, to quote Nightsun, "the cheapest way to buy, is to buy the right thing the first time." Now I see you're focusing on the onboard VGA as the source of all problems, but I want to let you know that getting a respectable-brand power supply is important too. So is the quality of the memory nowdays. You don't have to go crazy with the ultra-botique stuff, just get at least a Sparkle Power 300W unit and some Crucial RAM, both a notch above generic but WAY worth it. Antec, Enermax or even Enlight are some other ones that aren't trash-in-a-box brands.

The A7N266-VM I keep praising is only a $70 motherboard. Plunk a $35 stick of 256Mb Crucial PC2100 in there, add a $45 AthlonXP 1700+, and you've got what would amount to a Ford Escort GT, if it were a car. Spunky, hauls groceries, affordable, reliable (well, don't quote me on that, I'm not a car guy). Want to play 3D games, it handles them pretty well and has really fine 6-channel audio, just as good as the top-end $100+ audio cards do! Want to do work, it works sweet (like I said, 24 of them at the office and another ~16-20 coming next fiscal year). Onboard video or not, it is an excellent value, and it carries a three-year warranty. It does have an AGP slot too. I strongly recommend Windows2000 for it, and I strongly recommend Windows2000 in general. You want stable, there you go.

Don't bother hooking it up to a cheese-O-matic generic power supply though, spend the $27 for the Sparkle Power unit. Also, don't assume that you can re-use a Celeron heatsink on an AthlonXP or something. If you seriously go through with this, I'll gladly advise on a heatsink to get.

BTW, I don't have any silver spoon in my mouth, or anywhere else either I'm a failed Chemical Engineering student who got re-binned as a bicycle mechanic and eventually was overclocked into an Information-Technology Drone position. I paid student loans for 10 years and still don't sit too far above the poverty line. Good thing I'm single, is all I can say

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: RobCur
easy man, easy i am having a very hard time right now and I dont need any more headaches.
plz be more considerate of others who are less fortunate then you. i spend $$$ more then you can count your money in a billion years. scam after scam, it just never stop unless i give up computer hobby cause it really sucks. what you paid now is worthless in less then a year, very poor investment. btw, i never give up so their don't think i just roll over and die?! jesus christ. you haven't learned that I have gone throught hell to get those 7 computer of mine working in top shape and here you hillbillies who has everything in a silver spoon and don't understand nothing. oh well, i am not even talking to you, just a mirror in front of me that i am not getting an answer.

That is some Busey-talk you are speaking, man. I think you need to go try to find the Magic Indian. He might have the answers you seek.