the advantages of using video cards over onboard

[FuzzyWuzzy]

Can soneome tell me? Will it play video and movies better, smoother?

I just found out my centrino has its on video card, which I thought was neat and helped me choose this over P4.

 

[batharoy]

Here's the main difference:
Onboard video= No memory, it uses your system memory.
Video Card = Has memory on the card does not use system memory.
A video card will do all the things Onboard video will do.
Only it will be better and faster because it won't use your system
memory.

 

[techkid]

And games can play rather better, clearer and smoother. And depending on the game, they may not work properly or at all on on-board video (still suffering the stresses of on-board).

 

[mtown_onsite]

Onboard video is cheaper... But its usually *way* less powerful.

A decent video card (a newish ati, nvidia, etc) will give you much better performance for gaming and video. Also, many of these support the latest versions of directX, while most onboard ones will not.

 

[WarC]

Onboard video also tends to be several generations older and doesn't support the latest DirectX optimizations. Good luck playing Doom 3 on a machine with onboard video.

EDIT: Is there a parrot in here? I'm repeating what mtown said! Sorry!

ATI will be releasing a new chipset with an integrated 9600XT, it will be the most powerful integrated graphics card to date, but even now the 9600xt is showing its age.

 

[FuzzyWuzzy]

i was surprised my centrino laptop has a decicated card, i didnt know laptops are starting to do this now - getting off the onboard. Well for the high end models at least