Re: Determining if onboard VGA is used

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:46:20 +0200, "Maarten Wiltink"
<maarten@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

What, to you, determines the TYPE of video hardware? The chip, or
its connection to the CPU, or the presence of a physical slot in
between?

Type, as in...onboard versus not onboard.

You can get more specific too by looking at the actual GPU being used,
but it's not necessary because the GPUs found on actual AGP and PCI-E
cards simply don't exist in onboard versions. A simple analogy would
be that the PCI-E card was an F1 McClaren or Koenigsegg CCR, and the
onboard version was a Ford Taurus.


I have a motherboard, retired now, with an onboard SiS 6326 chip.
This chip, I've seen described, probably with reason, as crap. But
(a) it's connected over AGP (that's what the manual says), and
(b) I bet video cards have been made with that chip on them.

This motherboard also has an AGP slot. If I put such a card onto
that motherboard, _what difference would it make_?

In the case of the card you're talking about, the difference would not
be perceptible, but measureable. The reason it wouldn't be
perceptible is because it's ancient technology, and graphic processors
from that generation sucked equally bad in both external and internal
versions. You'll be able to measure a faster performance on a
card-version of that chip (assuming it exists), but the difference
wouldn't be that great because, as I said, it's ancient technology.

However, in the case of modern video cards versus modern onboard
video, the difference would be like night and day -- both perceived
and measured. Not only are the GPUs on the actual video cards MUCH
more powerful, but they also contain much faster and more advanced
memory (GDDR3), as opposed to using an onboard solution which uses
your system's main memory as its VRAM. The bus connecting the GPU to
its memory is also much wider (and faster) on a card versus its
onboard counterpart, which uses your system's bus and bus speed.

There's simply no comparison to be made.
.

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