Will a discrete video card ALWAYS make the computer run faster?

[Arcadio]

Is there a situation in which adding a video card won't make the computer run faster/smoother?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Arcadio
Will a discrete video card ALWAYS make the computer run faster?

Is there a situation in which adding a video card won't make the computer run faster/smoother?

1. Of course not...
2. Of course there is...

 

[lxskllr]

I have an old socket478 Shuttle system that has integrated gfx. I scrounged up an old Savage4 PCI gfx card thinking it would be better... I was wrong :^D My performance was just about halved :^D

Oh well, the card still works for testing purposes :^)

 

[betasub]

Faster doing what? A lot of apps are fairly independent of the graphics subsystem.

As lxskllr points out, there are some graphics cards that perform far worse than integrated solutions, especially the fully-featured modern on-board chips. Plenty of old graphics cards don't have features to compete in certain benchmarks.

 

[Arcadio]

Oh, actually, I meant in the general use of the computer. I don't care if the graphics card is worse than the integrated graphics, as long as the computer becomes faster for average user tasks such as browsing the web, opening programs, or listening to music. Is this the case?

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Originally posted by: Arcadio
Oh, actually, I meant in the general use of the computer. I don't care if the graphics card is worse than the integrated graphics, as long as the computer becomes faster for average user tasks such as browsing the web, opening programs, or listening to music. Is this the case?

for those tasks, no advantage at all. some integrated solution reserve some system memory for themselves but you should be able to set that to a lower number in the bios. however that probably wont do a thing for those tasks either unless your machine is really starved for memory (512 mb or some such). if thats the case (low system memory) toss more memory in rather than a vid card.

 

[lxskllr]

In my case browsing was much worse. It took noticeably longer to draw the pages. My objectDock was sluggish... The computer felt like it got 2 years older when I put that card in. Now the Savage4 is junk by today's standards. If I used gf5200 my results may have been better, it's hard to say. You can't make a blanket statement that a discrete gfx card is better than integrated though.

 

[magreen]

@VeryCharBroiled: you're neglecting the effect of the decreased memory bandwidth when using integrated graphics, to the tune of 400 MB/s depending on the resolution and refresh rate. On most modern systems with ddr2 and >2 GB/s of mem bandwidth, losing 400 MB/s will hardly be noticable. But on older systems (like my old socket 478 P4 with pc100 sdr sdram) losing 400MB/s out of a theoretical maximum 800MB/s was devastating to general usage of the machine. I think that's what the OP is referring to when he says adding discrete graphics improves general performance of the machine.

Even on today's AM2 AMD systems (though not on intel core 2 systems), boosting the mem bandwidth by 400 MB/s increases general performance a tad, esp in bandwidth sensitive apps like winrar.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Originally posted by: magreen
@VeryCharBroiled: you're neglecting the effect of the decreased memory bandwidth when using integrated graphics, to the tune of 400 MB/s depending on the resolution and refresh rate. On most modern systems with ddr2 and >2 GB/s of mem bandwidth, losing 400 MB/s will hardly be noticable. But on older systems (like my old socket 478 P4 with pc100 sdr sdram) losing 400MB/s out of a theoretical maximum 800MB/s was devastating to general usage of the machine. I think that's what the OP is referring to when he says adding discrete graphics improves general performance of the machine.

Even on today's AM2 AMD systems (though not on intel core 2 systems), boosting the mem bandwidth by 400 MB/s increases general performance a tad, esp in bandwidth sensitive apps like winrar.

hmm youre right, never though of the memory bandwidth overhead.

consider me a tad more edumacated

 

[magreen]

:beer: