Re: Do I Really Need A Graphics Card With This Board?

Agent_C wrote:
> http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Int...155/P8Z77V_LK/
>
> I'm putting together a workstation for a business application and
> considering this board.
>
> How good would you estimate the on-board graphics to be on this board?
> Compared say to an AMD Radion HD 6450?
>
> Thanks,
>
> A_C

If you're doing bar charts and pie charts, any graphics
is good enough for that.

If you're playing a 3D game, doing some OpenGL graphics (CAD
application), then you may want a stronger solution. You can
probably play The SIMS on the built-in graphics, but Crysis
wouldn't have a very high frame rate.

The graphics split on the Intel boards are a bit strange.
You can get chipsets without FDI support. And chipsets that
do have FDI support. The actual GPU is inside the processor
chip itself. If you check ark.intel.com for your processor, it
may list "Intel HD4000" or "Intel HD3000", and one might have
16EU, the other 12EU. So a slight difference, between generations
of Intel graphics.

The CPU has a GPU inside it. But the actual output connectors, are
not driven by the CPU itself. The CPU has an output bus (FDI) that
connects to the chipset. And the chipset has VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort
or some other type, supported in it.

http://ark.intel.com/inc/images/diagrams/diagram-18.gif

If you use a CPU with no GPU inside, then the motherboard graphics connectors
cannot work (black screen). If you use a CPU with an internal GPU, but
the chipset doesn't support video I/O connectors, there's no place to
access the GPU output. It's a patchwork solution that helps Intel
increase component sales.

Since "integrated graphics" nibble away at the bottom end of the
video card market, it stands to reason that the "weakest video card"
must be stronger than it's integrated competition. At least, from
a gaming perspective. If you're building an HTPC, then the
integrated graphics might be good enough.

In any case, there's a head to head comparison here. And the
6450 gets sandwiched between HD4000 and HD3000. Which means the
next generation ATI card, will need to be bumped up a tiny bit.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/201...nvestigation/3

Paul