Really, how bad are onboard graphics cards?

[Gwydion]

Title says it all. Looking to buy a cheap laptop for business travel that can run games. It will not be a desktop replacement, nor will I expect it to run like one.

Talking with tech-heads that are only interested in top of the line, they disregard conversations about on-board graphics cards....but I KNOW people still use them and want to get their opinions.

So...thoughts?

 

[GWguy]

Built-ins are fine for normal daily work, surfing, email, spreadsheets, etc. The only time you need an external card is if you need high power graphics for games, or for a specific application, like a drawing package.

As a side note, however, some graphics cards, could be internal or external, could use some of your system memory. Just something to be aware of if you seem to be running out of memory. It's cheap... add more memory even if you think you don't really need it.

 

[Toxick]

Talking with tech-heads that are only interested in top of the line, they disregard conversations about on-board graphics cards....but I KNOW people still use them and want to get their opinions.

So...thoughts?

It really depends on what you're going to be doing with it. If you primarily use applications such as Excel or Word, then getting top of the line graphics card is not savvy, because you'll never use its potential.

Having said that - I work with graphics intensive application. I use 3D Modellers, and put them into games that I write, plus I play graphics intenstive games.

I do this at home, using my on-board video card... which SUCKS! Seriously, it sucks major ass. The thing doesn't even have Pixel Shader 1.1 on it, which makes it completely useless for any XNA based games. And what really pisses me off is the fact that I went out and bought a video card, and I can't use it because for some reason I can't bypass on-board video and use the PCI bus for video.

But I digress.

Geeks will oftentimes discount on-board memory out of hand, on principal. But unless you're into gaming, or use 3D Graphics, and need hardcore video acceleration, on-board should be adequate.

Hm.... Now that I think about it, I think Window Vista might require some decent video strength. So take your OS into consideration as well.

 

[Floyd2004]

For a laptop just use what comes with it. If it were a desktop I would suggest a mild card atleast

 

[RadioCtrlDWife]

winbloat and video

It really depends on what you're going to be doing with it. If you primarily use applications such as Excel or Word, then getting top of the line graphics card is not savvy, because you'll never use its potential.

Having said that - I work with graphics intensive application. I use 3D Modellers, and put them into games that I write, plus I play graphics intenstive games.

I do this at home, using my on-board video card... which SUCKS! Seriously, it sucks major ass. The thing doesn't even have Pixel Shader 1.1 on it, which makes it completely useless for any XNA based games. And what really pisses me off is the fact that I went out and bought a video card, and I can't use it because for some reason I can't bypass on-board video and use the PCI bus for video.

But I digress.

Geeks will oftentimes discount on-board memory out of hand, on principal. But unless you're into gaming, or use 3D Graphics, and need hardcore video acceleration, on-board should be adequate.

Hm.... Now that I think about it, I think Window Vista might require some decent video strength. So take your OS into consideration as well.

We do EDA CAD/CAM and use dual monitors at our 2 workstations. I hope we do not HAVE to go to Vista because we want less bloat and more MIPS. I wish they would release "XP lite" specifically to our market. I don't need my windows to look like a Pixar movie, I just want to design products. I wish our Agilent EDA would support Linux.
Bill

 

[clevalley]

It really depends on what you're going to be doing with it. If you primarily use applications such as Excel or Word, then getting top of the line graphics card is not savvy, because you'll never use its potential.

Having said that - I work with graphics intensive application. I use 3D Modellers, and put them into games that I write, plus I play graphics intenstive games.

I do this at home, using my on-board video card... which SUCKS! Seriously, it sucks major ass. The thing doesn't even have Pixel Shader 1.1 on it, which makes it completely useless for any XNA based games. And what really pisses me off is the fact that I went out and bought a video card, and I can't use it because for some reason I can't bypass on-board video and use the PCI bus for video.

But I digress.

Geeks will oftentimes discount on-board memory out of hand, on principal. But unless you're into gaming, or use 3D Graphics, and need hardcore video acceleration, on-board should be adequate.

Hm.... Now that I think about it, I think Window Vista might require some decent video strength. So take your OS into consideration as well.

Another point to add is onboard video typically uses a portion of your RAM for its video memory - thus it takes away frrom system resources. On top of this, throughput on the motherboard from onboard memory to onboard video is in contention with all the other I/O within the system competing for CPU cycles AND bus access.

If you really need to cut corners, get a low-end video card - it does help...

Like Toxick said - it really depends on what you are going to use it for... day to day e-mail, web, word processing you do not need it... anything beyond this I would consider the lowest end video card and get off the motherboard video...

 

[clevalley]

We do EDA CAD/CAM and use dual monitors at our 2 workstations. I hope we do not HAVE to go to Vista because we want less bloat and more MIPS. I wish they would release "XP lite" specifically to our market. I don't need my windows to look like a Pixar movie, I just want to design products. I wish our Agilent EDA would support Linux.
Bill

We have done a lot of testing with Vista and once you get past the initiall 2 week learning period of Vista - it really is not that bad... Vista will need 1.5 GB of memory to pre-install the engines and DLL's of frequently used programs based on your tasks.

Vista will release these reasources when you launch a HUGE app (like a Call of Duty or a CAD application) and allocated all of memory to the game or application.

I would not recommend anything less than 2GB for Vista - optimum is 4GB...

From what I have seen - if your dirvers are 100% Vista, Unigraphics (what we use) runs just like it does on an XP machine - with the proper resources of course... our workstations have no less than 4GB per machine.

 

[RadioPatrol]

Title says it all. Looking to buy a cheap laptop for business travel that can run games. It will not be a desktop replacement, nor will I expect it to run like one.

Talking with tech-heads that are only interested in top of the line, they disregard conversations about on-board graphics cards....but I KNOW people still use them and want to get their opinions.

So...thoughts?

Define Games : the new Elder Scrolls - Not a Chance .......... something older like Quake II Probably ........

 

[Gwydion]

Define Games : the new Elder Scrolls - Not a Chance .......... something older like Quake II Probably ........

Lord of the Rings Online and some other older games (HL2-esque).

It looks like I will be going with

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5470 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 DIMM
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600M GT

Thanks!

 

[dn0121]

We do EDA CAD/CAM and use dual monitors at our 2 workstations. I hope we do not HAVE to go to Vista because we want less bloat and more MIPS. I wish they would release "XP lite" specifically to our market. I don't need my windows to look like a Pixar movie, I just want to design products. I wish our Agilent EDA would support Linux.
Bill

Dell and Comcrap (HP) still sell systems with XP, but that will be ending in 08.

 

[RadioCtrlDWife]

Dell and Comcrap (HP) still sell systems with XP, but that will be ending in 08.

Our main CADCAM EDA machine is a Dell Precision 360 with XP Pro.

FIVE O'CLOCK FLASH​

Ironic that HP is mentioned now for their consumer products. Their core engineering group is now called Agilent and they bought out the company that developed our EDA platform for RF a few years ago.
We just today closed the financing to upgrade our legacy Eagleware RF simulation and design environment to the current Agilent Genesys core with Designer Pro bundle. Wheeeew! Felt like Dustin Hoffman chasing that bus.Eagleware-Elanix | GENESYS Designer Pro
This is a big leap for us, but today was literally the last day that any of the last remaining few of us legacy Eagleware [dos] licenses could use our years of goodwill capital of supporting the platform early before Agilent bought them out.
We were very early adopters and owned =superstar= and even EEpal in DOS and are proudly =superstar= license number 140 LOL. I paid $4,000 for the DOS version and got my mileage!
We also have the spiffy and "modern" AWR Microwave office base system, but I kept reaching for my old DOS Eagleware and I had been putting off becoming very facile with AWR's environment, because I have 15 years worth of learning curve into Eagleware and it is intuitive to me.
For those not familiar with these tools, we use them to design wireless and radio circuits in our consulting business.
Have a Five Bar Day

 

[RadioPatrol]

Lord of the Rings Online and some other older games (HL2-esque).

It looks like I will be going with

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5470 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 DIMM
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600M GT

Thanks!

crap thats better than my desktop and i run HL2 just fine :yeah:

 

[RadioPatrol]

Our main CADCAM EDA machine is a Dell Precision 360 with XP Pro.

FIVE O'CLOCK FLASH​

Ironic that HP is mentioned now for their consumer products. Their core engineering group is now called Agilent and they bought out the company that developed our EDA platform for RF a few years ago.
We just today closed the financing to upgrade our legacy Eagleware RF simulation and design environment to the current Agilent Genesys core with Designer Pro bundle. Wheeeew! Felt like Dustin Hoffman chasing that bus.Eagleware-Elanix | GENESYS Designer Pro
This is a big leap for us, but today was literally the last day that any of the last remaining few of us legacy Eagleware [dos] licenses could use our years of goodwill capital of supporting the platform early before Agilent bought them out.
We were very early adopters and owned =superstar= and even EEpal in DOS and are proudly =superstar= license number 140 LOL. I paid $4,000 for the DOS version and got my mileage!
We also have the spiffy and "modern" AWR Microwave office base system, but I kept reaching for my old DOS Eagleware and I had been putting off becoming very facile with AWR's environment, because I have 15 years worth of learning curve into Eagleware and it is intuitive to me.
For those not familiar with these tools, we use them to design wireless and radio circuits in our consulting business.
Have a Five Bar Day

Interesting i have played around with Proteus 6 Pro strictly on a hobbyist lvl

 

[RadioCtrlDWife]

Interesting i have played around with Proteus 6 Pro strictly on a hobbyist lvl

That is a VERY nice looking package for the price.
We do not do any AVR or PIC programing right now, but if we need to do so, I would try Proteus.
We use Beige Bag B^2 Spice when we ever use spice [rarely], as to quote Bob Pease "Spice Lies", IE most of the models are too simple.
We do a lot of PCB design and we prefer to use Eagle Layout Editor exclusively for PCB layout and schematic capture.
Eagle Layout is not spice or a simulator tool and is made by CadSoft, not to be confused with Eagleware/Genesys RF simulation and synthesis tools by Agilent we just upgraded.
I am so excited about this upgrade, something we have wanted to do since Genesys was first released. The new interface is simply awesome and it now has co simulation with EM of the enclosure and allows one to simulate antennas too.
Eagle Layout is a very mature platform and it has a very powerful autrorouter and DFM utilities. Kim does the Gerber file post-processing in GC Preview for dead final DFM and panelization for pick and place programing files we create for robotic Assembly.
I am glad this board is here to connect to other designers here. I will try to figure out how to put some JPGs of some of our layouts here.
Bill

 

[RadioPatrol]

yeah my interest lies in taking misc hardware and hacking stuff together

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