No need for a graphics card on a Core2 Duo tower from 2007?

I recently took out the old Asus (Nvidia chip) 512 MB cheap graphics card, for the Win10-32 bit OS tower I am running now (3 GB RAM, Core2 Duo uP), and I'm wondering, since I'm using the 'on-board' video card (Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950, DirectX 9.0 and Max. shared memory 224MB http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm) and it seems to work OK (I don't do video games, no need for a fancy video card), why bother getting another PCI Express video card?

From what I can tell, the only reason would be to get a card before they run out of stock (cheap video cards are getting harder to buy?), but, the odds of that are small I imagine, since somebody somewhere will have such cheap cards for the next 10 years I imagine. So when this onboard video ever fails, I can always buy a cheap video card then. Using the onboard video chip, will that stress it somewhat and make it more prone to fail? Maybe.

Any other ideas? Maybe when I run AutoCAD to view certain not too complex drawings the system will run faster, but what else? The PC seems ok now. What is a decent benchmark test to run? SysMark something, do you have to pay for that benchmark? Something free so I can compare the benefits of getting a separate video card.

Thank you,

RL

RayLopez99 wrote:
I recently took out the old Asus (Nvidia chip) 512 MB cheap graphics card, for the Win10-32 bit OS tower I am running now (3 GB RAM, Core2 Duo uP), and I'm wondering, since I'm using the 'on-board' video card (Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950, DirectX 9.0 and Max. shared memory 224MB http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm) and it seems to work OK (I don't do video games, no need for a fancy video card), why bother getting another PCI Express video card?

From what I can tell, the only reason would be to get a card before they run out of stock (cheap video cards are getting harder to buy?), but, the odds of that are small I imagine, since somebody somewhere will have such cheap cards for the next 10 years I imagine. So when this onboard video ever fails, I can always buy a cheap video card then. Using the onboard video chip, will that stress it somewhat and make it more prone to fail? Maybe.

Any other ideas? Maybe when I run AutoCAD to view certain not too complex drawings the system will run faster, but what else? The PC seems ok now. What is a decent benchmark test to run? SysMark something, do you have to pay for that benchmark? Something free so I can compare the benefits of getting a separate video card.

Thank you,

RL

I like the separate card for cross-platform (Linux and Windows).
I might have more options with ATI and NVidia, than with Intel.

Intel has been gradually learning the graphics business. Some
of their older graphics in Northbridges were pretty sad. The
newer stuff where the GPU is inside the CPU, those are better
than they used to be.

You can get some benchmarks.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

Just for fun, let's compare the best Intel Iris graphics
(in CPU) versus the GT 710 $40 card.
Passmark G3D
GeForce GT 710 654
Iris Pro Graphics 6200, GT3e, 48 e.u. 1484

That's just to show that a little "cross-over" is possible.
However, the Intel CPU with those graphics inside, costs
a bit over $350, and I think you can see a $40 video card
has some advantages from a price perspective. There are
other Intel graphics, with 6x less e.u. (Execution Units).
So if we scale that 1484 number down by a factor of 6, the Intel
no longer looks like a winner. The people who can afford a
$350 CPU, generally have a gamer card as a matter of course,
so it's rather wasteful to put Iris graphics only in the
expensive one, when it would pay dividends in a "cheap" SKU.
However, I'm not a marketing genius like the staff at Intel.
They know exactly what they're (randomly) doing :-)

Before you make your "final" decision, I think I'd open
the AutoCAD and marvel at the smokin Intel performance.
Then see what you say.

Paul

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 12:56:58 -0800, RayLopez99 wrote:

I recently took out the old Asus (Nvidia chip) 512 MB cheap graphics
card, for the Win10-32 bit OS tower I am running now (3 GB RAM, Core2
Duo uP), and I'm wondering, since I'm using the 'on-board' video card
(Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950, DirectX 9.0 and Max. shared
memory 224MB http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm)
and it seems to work OK (I don't do video games, no need for a fancy
video card), why bother getting another PCI Express video card?

From what I can tell, the only reason would be to get a card before they
run out of stock (cheap video cards are getting harder to buy?), but,
the odds of that are small I imagine, since somebody somewhere will have
such cheap cards for the next 10 years I imagine. So when this onboard
video ever fails, I can always buy a cheap video card then. Using the
onboard video chip, will that stress it somewhat and make it more prone
to fail? Maybe.

Any other ideas? Maybe when I run AutoCAD to view certain not too
complex drawings the system will run faster, but what else? The PC
seems ok now. What is a decent benchmark test to run? SysMark
something, do you have to pay for that benchmark? Something free so I
can compare the benefits of getting a separate video card.

Thank you,

RL


AutoCAD appears to benefit from a video system that has 3D acceleration
available. This applies even if you aren't doing 3D drawing. At work we
are using HP mini-towers (getting a bit elderly now) and I did an upgrade
from the built-in graphics to the cheapest AutoCAD recommended video
card. The difference was quite remarkable (to me. YMMV of course).

On Monday, February 20, 2017 at 5:27:18 AM UTC-5, mick wrote:

AutoCAD appears to benefit from a video system that has 3D acceleration
available. This applies even if you aren't doing 3D drawing. At work we
are using HP mini-towers (getting a bit elderly now) and I did an upgrade
from the built-in graphics to the cheapest AutoCAD recommended video
card. The difference was quite remarkable (to me. YMMV of course).

OK thanks. Interesting that the old 3D Asus/Nvidia generic video card did have a driver for "3D" but the built-in Intel graphics card does not/may not.

On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 3:56:59 PM UTC-5, RayLopez99 wrote:
[]

For about $50 I bought this, apparently from the photo a low-profile, 'fan-less' video card:

Zotac PCI Express Video Card ZT-71301-20L by ZOTAC

Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce GT 710
Core Clock: 954 MHz
Video Memory: 1GB DDR3
Memory Clock: 1600 MHz
Memory Interface: 64-bit
Bus: PCI-Express 2.0

Benchmark: 654 for Zotac GeForce GT 710 (this in "http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/mid_range_gpus.html" Mid-Range Video cards)

And the video card driver program, downloaded direct from Zotac, does support 32 bit Windows 10, so I'm happy.

However, one guy on the net says this card gets "150 Frames Per Second", on a Core 2 Duo (same uP as my system) yet a quick review of another site says anything above 60 FPS is not visible to the human eye, since that is the refresh rate of an LCD monitor. So some cycles are being 'wasted' though I supposed if you are multi-tasking you might need those extra, hidden, 'wasted' cycles.

Wonder what Paul says...

RL

RayLopez99 wrote:
On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 3:56:59 PM UTC-5, RayLopez99 wrote:
[]

For about $50 I bought this, apparently from the photo a low-profile, 'fan-less' video card:

Zotac PCI Express Video Card ZT-71301-20L by ZOTAC

Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce GT 710
Core Clock: 954 MHz
Video Memory: 1GB DDR3
Memory Clock: 1600 MHz
Memory Interface: 64-bit
Bus: PCI-Express 2.0

Benchmark: 654 for Zotac GeForce GT 710 (this in "http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/mid_range_gpus.html" Mid-Range Video cards)

And the video card driver program, downloaded direct from Zotac, does support 32 bit Windows 10, so I'm happy.

However, one guy on the net says this card gets "150 Frames Per Second", on a Core 2 Duo (same uP as my system) yet a quick review of another site says anything above 60 FPS is not visible to the human eye, since that is the refresh rate of an LCD monitor. So some cycles are being 'wasted' though I supposed if you are multi-tasking you might need those extra, hidden, 'wasted' cycles.

Wonder what Paul says...

RL

I'm sure there's a setting to take care of that :-)

Some software has caps or limiters, so it doesn't do that.

It might get 150FPS playing DOOM or something.

The software can either adhere to VSYNC (hardware retrace,
no tearing). Or, it can run open-ended.

You could try the developer interface on Firefox, the one
with the frame rate graph, and see what it reports. That
one should be 60Hz when Firefox is compositing. (It does that
continuously, even when a web page isn't doing anything.)

Paul