On-MOBO video vs VIdeo card for 2D apps

It's build-a-new-PC time. (XP for as long as I can.) I'm looking at
this MoBo;

MOBO BIOSTAR TForce TA780G M2+HP AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/...t.php?S_ID=344

The spec sheet says this:

INTEGRATED VIDEO
# ATI Radeon. HD3200 Graphics, On Board Graphic Max. Memory Share Up to 512 MB
# Support ATI Hybrid Crossfire . Please refer to
http://ati.amd.com/technology/hybrid...echnology.html for details

I run Photoshop and some other 2D graphics on a 21 inch monitor at as
high as 1600 dots on the horizontal. That's a lot of bits. Will the
built-in video do it?

On a tangent, What does it take to run HDTV movies on a PC (Blu-Ray?)
I might put a disk player in the machine and watch the latest
movies. I don't really follow movie video, as my question might
suggest.

It looks like the video card uses some memory but, for now, I don't
care. The machine will have 2GB of memory and I rarely use all of
1GB, now. The cost of a video card can pay to max out the memory, and
that might be a net win for system performance.

I might care about memory bandwidth being shared between two CPU's and
an adapter. If I put a real video card in. does that easy of on the
memory bus?

For the sake of discussion (and price) I've put this video card in the
parts list.


VIDEO EVGA 256-P2-N429-LR GeForce 7200GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130098

Comments?




--
Al Dykes
News is something someone wants to suppress, everything else is advertising.
- Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the Daily Mail

If the motherboard has all the features you want and your only concern is
the "Integrated Video",
then download the user's manual and verify that you can disable the
Integrated Video and use a PCIe Video card,
which it appears that it can, but it can't hurt to double check.

You can always buy the Video Card at a later date, after you have tested the
system and if you find that the integrated graphics performance don't meet
your expectations, then buy the card.

No mention of a power supply. Get a quality brand with enough power that it
will easily meet your needs now and in the future should you upgrade the
system as time goes by.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com



"Al Dykes" wrote in message
...


It's build-a-new-PC time. (XP for as long as I can.) I'm looking at
this MoBo;

MOBO BIOSTAR TForce TA780G M2+HP AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD
Motherboard
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/...t.php?S_ID=344

The spec sheet says this:

INTEGRATED VIDEO
# ATI Radeon. HD3200 Graphics, On Board Graphic Max. Memory Share Up to
512 MB
# Support ATI Hybrid Crossfire . Please refer to
http://ati.amd.com/technology/hybrid...echnology.html for
details

I run Photoshop and some other 2D graphics on a 21 inch monitor at as
high as 1600 dots on the horizontal. That's a lot of bits. Will the
built-in video do it?

On a tangent, What does it take to run HDTV movies on a PC (Blu-Ray?)
I might put a disk player in the machine and watch the latest
movies. I don't really follow movie video, as my question might
suggest.

It looks like the video card uses some memory but, for now, I don't
care. The machine will have 2GB of memory and I rarely use all of
1GB, now. The cost of a video card can pay to max out the memory, and
that might be a net win for system performance.

I might care about memory bandwidth being shared between two CPU's and
an adapter. If I put a real video card in. does that easy of on the
memory bus?

For the sake of discussion (and price) I've put this video card in the
parts list.


VIDEO EVGA 256-P2-N429-LR GeForce 7200GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express
x16 Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130098

Comments?




--
Al Dykes
News is something someone wants to suppress, everything else is
advertising.
- Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the Daily Mail

Al Dykes wrote:
It's build-a-new-PC time. (XP for as long as I can.) I'm looking at
this MoBo;

MOBO BIOSTAR TForce TA780G M2+HP AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/...t.php?S_ID=344

The spec sheet says this:

INTEGRATED VIDEO
# ATI Radeon. HD3200 Graphics, On Board Graphic Max. Memory Share Up to 512 MB
# Support ATI Hybrid Crossfire . Please refer to
http://ati.amd.com/technology/hybrid...echnology.html for details

I run Photoshop and some other 2D graphics on a 21 inch monitor at as
high as 1600 dots on the horizontal. That's a lot of bits. Will the
built-in video do it?

On a tangent, What does it take to run HDTV movies on a PC (Blu-Ray?)
I might put a disk player in the machine and watch the latest
movies. I don't really follow movie video, as my question might
suggest.

It looks like the video card uses some memory but, for now, I don't
care. The machine will have 2GB of memory and I rarely use all of
1GB, now. The cost of a video card can pay to max out the memory, and
that might be a net win for system performance.

I might care about memory bandwidth being shared between two CPU's and
an adapter. If I put a real video card in. does that easy of on the
memory bus?

For the sake of discussion (and price) I've put this video card in the
parts list.


VIDEO EVGA 256-P2-N429-LR GeForce 7200GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130098

Comments?


The solution is simple. Buy the motherboard only. Test the performance of
the built-in graphics. Only buy the video card, if it is not satisfactory.

Unless you're a gamer, the built-in should be enough to do the job.

For movie playback, some vendors make suggestions.

Asus has several 780G products listed here.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1

And this is their suggestion.

"Integrated ATI RV610-based Direct x10.1 graphics
Maximum shared memory of 256 MB
Supports HDMI Technology with HDCP compliant with max. resolution 1920 x 1080p
Supports DVI-D with max. resolution 2560x1600 (@ 60Hz dual-link)
Supports RGB with max. resolution 2048 x 1536 (@85Hz) = VGA
Dual VGA output support:
RGB & DVI/HDMI
Hybrid CrossFireX Support

*To playback the HD-DVD and Blu ray Disc we recommended system configuration
above Graphic shared memory 256MB/Dual-Core CPU minimum/Minimum 1GB memory
of Dual-channel DDR2 667 or Single-chanel DDR2 800."

For movie playback, you can see articles like this one.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3258&p=7

"AMD integrates their Unified Video Decoder 2.0 (UVD 2.0) capabilities into the
780G. UVD 2.0 offers hardware acceleration for decoding VC-1, H.264 (AVC),
WMV, and MPEG-2 sources up to 1080p resolutions. Advanced de-interlacing is
available when using a Phenom processor. We generally found CPU utilization
rates and output quality to be near or equal to that of the HD 3450."

UVD does not work with arbitrary software. The acceleration feature is
enabled with certain playback applications. Other players may rely more
on the processor, to render video. Check software specs for details.

HTH,
Paul