Uh yea witch?!

[Gravegun]

Okay I am running my brothers compaq till I get my computer finished building. Its nifty with a decent ASUS board and all with on board ATI EXPRESS READON 200 Series(400Ghz) 256mb. My last computer had a monster ATI 256mb card and could run things like Half-Life 2 with ease. Well I am still not use to dealing with graphics card, soon to find out this on board 256mb could only run WoW at its lowest settings fine. Well I read teh sticky on this forum and read a bit, then today I went into work and got a GeForce Fx 5200 for free off the self boss let me have it for payment. I pop'd it in 128mb and it runs wow at its max in everything fine, I put a fan under it to help the heat sink. I was just wondering why does the on board 256mb no work anywhere near as good? Just would like so quick tips, also is there anything like FanSpeed*witch I use to Overclock this comp *p4 3.00Ghz*only read 2.79* and got it to 3.24 http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/ImHappy821/P43.24GHzOverclock.jpg *my first OC* to look at any PCI/PCIE temps?

 

[spanky]

on-board graphics are terrible and should never be used if you want to play any game but solitaire.

 

[Gravegun]

I figured that since it was on board. However, since its on board and has 256 mb ram what is that shared and leeching off my boards ram?

 

[elitehacker]

Memory is not everything, so having 256MB means nothing. If you have integrated no matter how much memory you have, your gaming experience is going to be bad. The FX5200 is a very low end car but its still better than integrated. Other factors like the memory interface come into play, system ram is only 64-bit while even the low end FX5200 is 128-bit, at least that's the model I had, I have heard of 64-bit versions though, but the main thing is the GPU, a dedicated graphics card has a much better graphics processing unit than any integrated solution out there.
As a rule of thumb, you should always get a dedicated graphics solution if you want to game.