integrated graphics cards not so bad?

Question

a while ago i asked if my new computers integrated graphics card was any good. The general consensus was that it was crap but i find i can play good games with it no probs. eg warhammer 40k dawn of war dark crusade with the settings up full no problems. How come, is my dual core 1.6Gh proccessor picking up the slack or is it just not as bad as people think

Answer 1

hi derek
you are correct,a few years ago the main intergrated graphics adapters were the intel graphics accelerators and the sis and s3 adapter,these were just not up to the kob of playing anything slightly graphic intensive
however with the radeon xpress and intergrated geforce 6210/6150 adapters these have changed the way some people look at onboard graphics
for example the radeon xpress 1250 onboard adapter has a core clock speed of 400mhz which is equivelent to a geforce 7600gs however the xpress 1250 only uses pixel and shader model 2.0 were as the 7600gs uses model 3.0
but pixel and shader model 2.0 is by no means bad,this is the standard of the geforce fx series and the radeon 9550
and the xpress 1250 uses up to 256mb of video memory and can borrow more using s.m.a (shared memory architecture)
whatever way you look at it onboard graphics have come a long way over the last two years and with the introduction of terrascale processors in around five years time(up to 256 cores on a processor) the graphics in a p.c will be included on the processor,so this may see the end of the graphic card as we know it
with 256 cores to spare then graphics can use up to 50 of these,imagine that,the equivelent of 50 processors running your graphics sub-system,well lets wait and see
a very good question derek ,well done
good luck mate !

Answer 2

integrated pictures are undesirable through fact the CPU handles the pictures, no longer a video card. it is excellent on smaller, low use units like netbooks. yet for a working laptop or laptop that's a extreme overall performance drop for staring at video, enjoying video games and different extreme issues. And in case your do no longer prefer to pay a lot, you may no longer anticipate to get a lot. $800-$one thousand and up for a first rate twin center i5 or i7 with 500MB of photos or greater useful.

Answer 3

Your threshold of good is just not set all that high.
Consider the fact that a typical MB with embedded graphics cost maybe $100-$150. Compare that to the hardware cost of a higher end graphics card alone and it is about the same price.

Answer 4

It's not that bad that it won't play any games. It will work for sure but the performance and frames will not be as good as with high-end cards. The games will work fine until you increase detail or resolution.

Answer 5

That just happens to be a remarkably undemanding game, consider yourself lucky. If you put something like Oblivion on there, or F.E.A.R. or Quake 4, etc. etc. you would be most unhappy.