Old ATI All-In-Wonder Pro 32 Mb vs. Intel Extreme Graphics 2

[Wondering]

Good day,



My husband and I are relatively skilled users, but we don't know much about
hardware, especially graphics cards, so your help will be very much
appreciated.



For Christmas we decided to get ourselves a new "second computer in the
family" (mid-range), and bought a Dell Dimension 4600. Since we were on a
budget, we chose to invest in memory (512 Mb SDRAM) and hard drive (120 Gb),
and to get integrated graphics now with the idea of buying an ATI or nVidia
card sometime in distant future and putting it in the available AGP slot.



Thus, our system (it is not yet shipped) will arrive with Intel Extreme
Graphics 2.



Now, just after the holidays a co-worker offered to give me, free, her old
ATI card, which is (I wrote it down carefully) All-In-Wonder 128 Pro 32 Mb
AGP 4x/2x. She says it is about 3 years old, but she has an original retail
box, drivers and software.



The question is: I have no clue whether my system will work better "as is",
with the modern, but integrated, Intel graphics card, - or with the old, but
AGP, ATI card. I tried to read up on Intel and ATI sites, but of course each
one says "I am the best".



We don't need game-playing performance, in terms of graphics this machine
will be used for occasional DVD viewing, and maybe - rarely - for digital
video recording without editing (grab via FireWire from the camera, dump on
a DVD-R).



Please tell me which card should we go with. Thanks in advance!

 

[Bob Almond]

OK, I know the following is obvious, but it's worth stating anyway. The Ati
card includes both a TV tuner and analogue video in - so you can watch TV in
a window on screen, record/timeshift TV programmes, and watch and capture
analogue video sources - VHS tapes, etc. I have the card you mention, and I
would answer your question differently. If you aren't into games, you won't
notice any difference in performance. But the Ati card offers extra
facilities which you might find useful.

Some (but by no means all) integrated chipsets will let you run an AGP card
at the same time, so you could then have a dual monitor system!

If the Ati card isn't costing you anything / much, then go for it. It's a
good card.

Bob

 

[Wondering]

Thanks a lot for the explanations and advice. I think we'll grab the card
since it is free, and will indeed try to put it in simultaneously if the
motherboard accepts it.