PCI Graphics or Onboard AGP? 1

[Malakili]

Ok, I just bought my misses a cheap second hand pc, (keeps her off mine then! ). Its specs are
AMD II 500
196 meg ram
10 gig HDD
Soundblaster pci 64
Voodoo 1 4 meg accelerator
and 8 meg onboard AGP.

She wants to play some games on it but not many, occasionally refresh of desktop etc is slow. So i figured it may be a good idea to install a PCI graphics/accelerator card. Something to give it a tad more video memory. Now a local store has suggested that it`ll be better to leave it as is, they`re under the opinion that the AGP onboard will do a better job than say a 32 meg Geforce. The reasoning being that the PCI has slower access speed than the AGP, even though it only has limited memory.
Anyone got any thoughts on this? Please expand on why you either would/would not swap the card.

Thanx in advance.

Malakili

 

[DaveGoTech]

They're right. With the built-in 8MB AGP video, you really have no choices for upgrading. Besides, simply adding more RAM to the video card is probably not going to speed up your video performance. Look at the CMOS settings and the video card drivers and associated settings.

 

[NtelStomper]

AGP might be a faster speed than PCI bus, however the memory on the onboard AGP systems is slow as anything. If you get a half-decent PCI card like a Gforce or even a TNT2-Ultra your system will be faster. Trust me, I've seen the difference.

 

[paparazi]

Yup!! good PCI would be better!!
Basically freeing up your motherboard resources!!
More importantly though is the onboard graphics chipset, probably a SIS or something like!! not in the same leauge as a dedicated Nvidia card, even if it is hampered by a slow interface!!
Now when the new crop of boards arrives with G/force powered graphics built in things will be quite diferant!!!
Martin

 

[Out0fOrder]

Hello,
Pertaining to this thread... I had an SIS Graphics card onboard that was on an AGP bus (8 Megs of RAM) and it was Very Slow. After a while I upgraded to a TNT/2 (32 Megs) PCI and it was wonderfull, comparatively. The Problem is that the onboard graphics chipset can't handle acceleration as good as, say, a TNT2 doing its own thing.

On a Side note... All this will Change Soon Curtosy of NVIDIA. They've just released a new chipset (North and SouthBridge) named the nForce. Prepare for integrated GeForce2 MX/400 on the motherboard, not to mention a whole slew of other upgrades! I can't wait to test run one of these.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?page=nforce

One Other Thing, as I recall, it doesn't support Intel CPU's. Only AMD's. The Former SGI Folks (nVidia) seem to know good hardware.

-Out0fOrder