Onboard video chipset question for lower end computers...

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STATIC3D

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Being the CAG that I am (lol), my wife and I have computers that are pretty well past their prime. So, we started looking into replacing our machines at the same time, which means finding a cheaper solution. I've looked into computers at Fry's as well as done some research online for places like Best Buy, Office Max/Depot, etc. Most of what I've seen is decent for our needs on the Processor/RAM end of things (seeing as we haven't upgraded for a good while, pretty much anything would be an improvement...lol).

Anywho, the only thing I'm running into a bit of trouble finding info on is the onboard video chipsets many of these motherboards use. Most of them are in the NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE and ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 range. Seeing as we are still running GeForce 4 Ti 4200s (okay, stop the laffing), either of these will probably be an improvement (with the possibility to upgrade just the video card in the future).

As my experiences with ATI in the past were not all that great (espeically when it came to getting them to properly run some of my older favorite PC titles I run every once in a while), I'm not as big on them. And, my continued good experiences with Nvidia cards also has me leaning in their direction. However, if it turns out that some of these onboard chipsets have "issues" or such, I'd like to know if anyone can tell me, or, at least point me in the direction of some reviews/roundups/etc. on them.

So, anyone have any info on em?
 
If anything they're probably far worse than even an old GeForce 4 Ti. I would highly suggest checking online with the manufacturer of the computer models you're interesting in and seeing if they have an available PCI-Express slot for a graphics card.

It's an easy upgrade to do yourself and you can get a good mid-range card like the GeForce 7600 for $150 (if not less). You could obviously go cheaper if that's still too much, but you definitely want a discrete card with it's own memory instead of one of those crappy integrated things leeching your system memory.
 
On board graphics just aren't good. Integrated graphics are one thing but on board graphics are usually for systems not meant to game.

Your GF4200 will have more punch than either one of those two on board chips. As the above poster said, find a computer with a PCIe and get a cheap GPU. But don't get anything you won't use. Do you actually plan to play any games? If yes, then you will definitely have to consider a real graphics card.
 
Thanks for the info. I did find some stuff on the Nvidia chipset and it looks to have a better thruput/fillrate/etc. than our cards now. However, as you all mentioned, onboard stuff usually never lives up. Most of the systems I've looked at do have a PCI-E slot (for future video card upgrade).

I found some good info on CPUs at tomshardware ( http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html ). I was suprised to see the AMD processors at a good bit lower clock speeds kickin Intel CPUs in the butt for the Unreal Tournament 2004 tests (at least in every case of CPU for the machines I've looked at so far).

So far, we are probably gonna grab a couple of machines around $500. Then, later on, if I wanna upgrade the graphics, I'll pick out a PCI-E card to stick in.
 
I had a system that had the 6150LE, it uses the system's ram as it's own, so you'll get a lot of performance lag because of it. I just got like a 6600gt off of ebay for $50 to replace it, much better now.
 
Kul, thanks. After a bit more research, we sorta zeroed in on what would work for us and picked up Compaqs with AMD 3500+ CPUs.

I've checked out a couple of games without any problem but I have got a REAL strange one going in the original Unreal Tournament. For years I've played the game with basically the same settings (only increasing them as hardware upgrades would allow). However, on this new machine, the game runs SUPER FAST. I don't mean the framerates are high, I mean the speed of the game has increased as if I was playing a turbo speed match (which I'm not, it's still at 100% as I've always played).

I know the CPU is faster, but GEEZ. I'm in the process of tracking down how to adjust the game to make it work like I want it to (good speed/framerates/etc.). Most of what I've found so far does "work" but it's sorta hacks that don't allow for the new hardware speeds/power to be taken advantage of. They basically throttle back stuff to make it run like it was on older hardware...bummer. Hey, I know UT is an "old" game by today's standards, but it's one I still like to fire up from time to time. :}
 
I had the same problem when I installed Unreal on my current computer... everything moved too fast. I couldn't figure it out what it was and the only solution was to under-tune my hardware which I wasn't going to do.

So I just started playing UT2004 instead.:p
 
So far, what I've found is that it's most directly related to the speeds of the CPU and how the Unreal engine is so tied to it. I remember hearing people having problems with UT2003/2004 with overclocked systems because of how sensitive the engine was to the clock speeds/etc.

The easiest "fix" for it is to add "-cpuspeed=1800" to the end of the shortcut target. This was a trick found that was originally used by people who couldn't get UT to recognize their processor. So, by telling the game what speed CPU it had, it worked towards/for/at? that speed CPU. When you have a faster CPU, this has the effect of telling the game you have less than you actually have, so it runs at that defined clock speed. I found 1800 to be a "bit" slower feeling than I was used to, so I set mine at 2000 and it seemed pretty good.

The only real problem I'm having now that I've got the speed of the game set right is getting decent FPS. My old rig ran UT around 60 to 70 FPS in OpenGL. This new rig really isn't running it much faster. However, I did notice a good improvement in both image quality and smoothness of FPS in BF1942. I guess I may still have some tweaking to do to see if I can squeeze some more FPS out of it.

The thing about most of these games is I've just been able to copy over the game directory to my new machine, set up a new shortcut and start playing. I haven't checked out UT2004 since it gave me a CD Key error message and said I need to re-install...thphphphph....lol.

At least now with the new rig I'm gonna be able to play some demos for games I've been putting off since my hardware/software(OS) wouldn't allow me to check em out. :}
 
I'm using the EXACT same settings as before for both games. For UT, I simply copied over the directory from my original HD and created a new shortcut. For UT2004, it needed the CD Key in the registry before it would run. So, I renamed my UT2004 folder (to UT2004-old), installed UT2004 (w/ CD Key entry), deleted the newly installed UT2004 and re-renamed my UT2004-old folder back to UT2004. So, it's my original/same install as on my previous machine.

Any tweaks done after that (so far) have only been done after my original ini files/etc. were backed up so I could revert to their settings if the changes didn't work (like adjusting minimum framerate settings/etc.).

For the original UT, I've seen on the beyond unreal forums some info on using different video render DLLs people have tweaked (OpenGL and D3D). I have yet to put time into messing much with them as I know it will take some time (and I don't want to miss something).
 
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