Peter said:
Which Intel motherboard has the best integrated video in
terms of Windows Vista requirements?
The performance of built-in video is not that strong,
at least in 3D mode. Aero runs the GPU in 3D mode, so
you would be subject to the limits of motherboard graphics.
Make sure the motherboard you buy, has a video card slot
available. On PDF page 12, in Figure 1, you can see a
PCI Express x16 slot next to the Northbridge heatsink.
http://download.intel.com/products/motherboard/DG33TL/tps.pdf
If you get the new motherboard, and Vista graphics performance
is not good enough, you can always get a regular or a low-profile
PCI Express x16 graphics card, to spruce up the performance.
When compared to regular video cards, built-in graphics on
motherboard chipsets, are always at the bottom of the chart.
Virtually any video card, will be better than motherboard
graphics.
Some cheap Dell, HP etc. computers, have no video card slot.
If you make the mistake of buying one of those, having
no video card slot means you cannot fix the performance
later. (Yes, you can get a PCI card, but the PCI bus has
some pretty low bandwidth figures.)
In this example, you can see the order that Windows Experience Index
results are returned in. Aero graphics is the third parameter and
gaming graphics is the fourth parameter.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/images/weibuild5536_1s.png
In this foreign language page, G33 BearLake rates 3.8 and 3.3
respectively (of 6.0 max).
http://www.pc-research.info/pcparts/motherboard/070523231258.html
There is a chart here, with a couple other build-in graphics chipsets
tested for Vista. Both rated in the low to mid 3 level.
http://www.extremenano.com/print_article/AMDs+Mainstream+Platform+Play/202143.aspx
Results are hard to find, and more foreign language pages seem
to be interested in the Vista index, than English pages. I wanted
to include an Intel G965 in the results, but at least some of the
pages are not using the latest software for testing.
Paul
