Hmmm, just saw that there is an AMD version of the nVidia 6xx series chipset as well... cool...

E-66, here you have the information on the nVidia chipsets. If you go for onboard VGA; iNTEL: 950 Graphics - and - AMD: 6150 Graphics.

I would never go onboard for anything except special purpose built PCs (mini ITX et al) for this one reason:

Onboard video cards suck up precious memory bandwidth and memory that would otherwise be available for more crucial CPU intensive tasks.

Edited December 2, 200619 yr by jaqie

Ok, thanks for the link, I'll look it over. I also sent you a PM.

Ok, I looked over the chipset info. Based on what I read I'd say the 550 series would more than suffice my needs. I had to laugh when I saw some of the info on the 600 series: 20 USB ports? 10 PCI slots? I have 5 PCI slots now and I'm only using 1 of them.

I would never go onboard for anything except special purpose built PCs (mini ITX et al) for this one reason:

Onboard video cards suck up precious memory bandwidth and memory that would otherwise be available for more crucial CPU intensive tasks.

Naa, it doesn’t suck your memory .

Ones upon a time in computer-world there existed chipsets that did. The modern chipsets with integrated VGA don’t use the CPU (FPU) any more like before, the bandwidth of the RAM will drop just a bit, think about 5-10% MAX.. Latencies are not the problem but you already knew that...

the bandwidth of the RAM will drop just a bit, think about 5-10% MAX..

I would like to know how you came up with that.

Especially if the video card is doing heavy graphics work (i.e. helping a transcoder which many do now) the bandwidth used will be much higher.

It easy to do: Testing bandwidth with and without a VGA card. Also that “transcoder” thing: take a look at the nVidia 6150/430 and you will see it has hardware integrated that will release CPU power.

But what did you test memory bandwidth with? I hope not sandra.

Strange but true; MEMtest , Everest and well I have to confess Sandra too, and there is more info on this on the net. You know why it doesn’t take up so much bandwidth? Because it uses a part of the RAM dedicated and directly for the onboard VGA-chip.

OK I can understand a little, but memtest? what does that have to do with video using shared ram bandwidth? Try watching a DVD at the same time you are running the tests, for one.

Something like PowerDVD with it's image enhancement on full.

Edited December 2, 200619 yr by jaqie

PowerDVD enhancements are software isn’t it? Most chipsets have MPEG2 decoding so that part is 100% hardware nowadays.

With MEMtest you can see the throughput of cache and RAM.

PowerDVD enhancements are software isn’t it? Most chipsets have MPEG2 decoding so that part is 100% hardware nowadays.

Yes, software. Software that is ran in the CPU and the GPU. They still send data direct to video card RAM for additional rendering, therefore, there is still serious activity between the GPU and its ram. That is my very point.

With MEMtest you can see the throughput of cache and RAM.

EXACTLY! you can see the bandwidth available when the video card is COMPLETELY IDLE! My whole point is that it is never completely idle in windows, and most people are doing something that at least uses a lot of system memory <-> video memory <-> GPU bandwidth, which using the same already starved system memory bus for this really agggrivates the situation.

It doesn’t lower performance any more then an add-on VGA card. It’s a standalone circuit that only uses a part of the RAM, ONLY lowering the bandwidth. A 6150 GPU is like a 6200-TC GPU .

EDIT: "...think about 5-10% MAX.. ..."

Edited December 2, 200619 yr by puntoMX

You totally don't understand the mechanics involved if you believe that.

Then why don’t you explain EXACTLY how it works? Take the 6150/430 from nVidia for Example.

EDIT: It uses a DEDICATED part of the RAM, a range of addresses, not scrambled or fragmented all over the RAM, it uses complete blocks...

Edited December 2, 200619 yr by puntoMX