Everybodys been telling me its a bad card and I should change it if i want to get a certain pc but i ask u why? I dont know a lot about graphics cards so I go by the amount of memory a card has. I look at some cards and most ones around $100 have 128mb while this 1 has 256mb so in my eyes isnt that suppose to be better? I also heard something about it being an onboard video thing and it steals 256mb from my ram although is that y its a bad card? Or, is it because of something else? Really confused... :confused:

BTW: Heres a link to the card site:http://www.ati.com/products/radeonxpress200/index.html

I personally think that HyperMemory and TurboCache cards are a waste of time. This a HyperMemory card that has no unboard memory so it takes a chunk of your system memory to use as it's own. On this isn't smart cuz the more you take, sure you'll have more video memory but you have less system memory. Second it can't be counted as a very fast card because it only supports DDR 1 and 2 and is running the memory through your mother board to the card to render the images, it seems to me that if they would just put the memory on the card it would speed things up considerably. Also i looked at the link you gave and it seems to me that this card only supports up to 128MB. I know that memory cards like this one are a whole lot cheaper but it's not just the amount of memory that you have the determines the specs of the video card.

If it was me I'd go find one that is about $130 that isn't HyperMemory or TurboCache unless your willing to spend more.

If you would post what you would be doing with this card it would help in determining if you would even be able to do it.

Davey

Good question. :)

OK. Lets start by defining a video card.

A video card is an "add-on" or "expansion" device. A device that has to be physically inserted into a expansion slot on the motherboard, like a PCI, AGP, or PCIe x16 slot. The latter two are exclusively used by video cards, PCIe x16 being the latest and fastest. There are other types of expansion slots, but these are the ones we need to be concerned with for graphics.

Modern video cards have become so complex and powerful that they are almost a complete mini computer in and of themselves. Having their own processor or GPU(Graphical Processing Unit), and their own dedicated RAM. Even more they are made to do one thing, process video information to display on the monitor. And I'm sure you have heard the old saying - do one thing and do it better than anyone else. Well that's exactly what video cards do.

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Integrated Graphics is not a video card. It is a graphics chip integrated into the chipset of the motherboard - it can not be added or removed. It does not have it's own dedicated RAM or any other resources. It piggy backs on the system resources. :( Not a good thing when playing games and the CPU and system ram are already very busy with running the program itself.

A quick comparison of the v-card that was suggested by Hockeyman in this thread (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=41223) and the ATI Xpress 200.

MSI Radeon X800 128MB -256bit
-core clock - 700MHz
-12 pixel pipelines - used to feed the video information to the GPU and ram
-Dedicated on chip 128MB ram


ATI Xpress 200
-core clock - 350MHz
-2 pixel pipelines - :eek: with only 2 pixel pipelines there is not much information getting processed.
-can barrow up to 256MB system ram

There is more to it than that, but I'm sure you can see the big difference in those numbers alone. Even though 256MB seems like more, the x800's 128MB dedicated ram can do much more than the 200's 256MB because of it's faster core speed and many more pixel pipelines.

I hope that clears things up a little. If your interested what those numbers really mean check out this thread. http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=39536

Thanx Jlreich, I get it now.