If more computers came with dedicated video cards instead of onboard/integrated motherboard video GP

froggyboy604

froggyboy604

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Yes, I think if more low to midend computer comes with a 800MHZ or higher with 256MB-1GB video ram dedicated PCI Express video cards made by Nvidia or ATI, more people will play computer games on their computer since most onboard/integrated video cards made by Intel and other brands are too slow or don't have the features needed to play games at medium to high quality even if you have a fast CPU and lots of RAM.
 
The answer is maybe... Some people buy low end PCs simply because they don't care about games, don't want to play games and don't need to spend the money to.
A prime example would be a grandparent. They probably don't care about running Mass Effect 3 or Modern Warfare 3 (if those games would even run on a low end machine's specs) or even peggle for that matter. So they don't need a dedicated graphics card since they are probably going to be more worried about just getting on the internet or downloading their email.

Others buy low end PCs because that's all they can afford at times (and even then sometimes it is a struggle to come up with the cash for that if they're already living payday to payday, stretched too thin). So again gaming is probably not even on their mind. If the option were there they might take advantage of it, but it's hard to say for certain. Just because one could game doesn't mean one will.
Gaming is a luxury, not a requirement or a necessity of any sort. And by putting dedicated cards into low end PCs that would very likely raise their cost up a bit... A cost the consumer may not be able to justify. Which kind of defeats the point of creating a low-end PC.
 
I believe there are low end graphic cards, but I heard they can be not much better then onboard/dedicated video. But, I also see some lowend to mid-low end computers with a lot of RAM which is almost too much RAM and hard drive space for what the typical lowend user will use the computer for like Word Proccessing, Internet, e-mail, etc, but I think if the low end computer has slightly slower CPU, 2-3GB of RAM, a 500GB or smaller hard drive, etc then the companies can put a low end or mid end dedicated video card, but without raising the price too much or not raising the price at all.

But, I feel most average people who buy computers don't know much about video cards compared to RAM, CPU, Hard drive, and operating system, so companies spend most of their time installing faster parts for RAM, CPU, Hard drive.
 
Laptops aren't really ideal for gaming anyway though... Some can handle gaming, but those are typically the higher end desktop replacement models or gaming specific laptops (like the alienware brands high end ones) most, if not all, of which are going to cost upwards of a thousand dollars. Laptops are mostly for lighter computing on the move, which is how they make up for the loss of raw speed/power, by offering flexibility and mobility instead.

Though adding a dedicated graphics card doesn't really improve performance for most use until you get into heavy graphics. And even then if it's a low end graphics card it's likely just going to choke since it's speed, bandwidth and amount of ram won't be enough.

The problem with lowering low end computer specs to make up for the added cost of the graphics card is that when you consider how much the OS of modern computers needs to function. Too low and you'll find your systems running a bit short pretty quick. Windows 7 (64-bit) takes a 1GHz processor, 2GB of ram and 20 gigabytes of space for itself at a bare minimum to run the OS. So trying to do gaming on a machine that only just passes the requirements to run the OS probably isn't going to work so well.
Also just because someone doesn't game doesn't mean they can't easily fill a 500GB or even a 1TB harddrive.
 
You can always dual boot, and install Windows XP on a second hard drive or partition to use to play older games, and newer games which still work on XP.

3GB RAM can probably can play games like World of Warcraft, and other MMO, and using a low-mid-end graphics card made by Nvidia and ATI might be a better gaming experience then using onboard video for playing older games and less advance games.
 
froggyboy604 said:
You can always dual boot, and install Windows XP on a second hard drive or partition to use to play older games, and newer games which still work on XP.

3GB RAM can probably can play games like World of Warcraft, and other MMO, and using a low-mid-end graphics card made by Nvidia and ATI might be a better gaming experience then using onboard video for playing older games and less advance games.
Click to expand...

Anything's better than an onboard video. Those intel cards... ruined my first few gaming years T_T
 
Sadly, I'm still using an Intel onboard card because I'm too lazy to order a mid-end PCI-Express video card for my current computer, but whenever I visit a local computer shop, and see a good deal for a midend video card by ATI or Nvidia I probably get one.

Intel is actually a slight upgrade for me compared to my old computer which used VIA's S3 32MB RAM onboard video which is even slower, and can not play 720P HD video files on YouTube.

I also dislike that onboard video uses 8MB-256MB or more of your RAM for video which sometimes slow down your PC performance. I also heard that onboard video can use some CPU cycles which can slow down your computer experience when playing lowend games compared to using a lowend card which has its own CPU and RAM to use for video processing, so your CPU can be used for other tasks like loading the game, sound, voice chat, etc.
 
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