On Friday 17 December 2004 17:49, Dave C. wrote:

Plus, the Intel Extreme 2 video adapter built into the mainboard will
likely be faster than any of the video cards you were thinking of buying.

I would have to disagree; I once had the misfortune of using a system with
an Intel IGP, and it supported some very odd resolutions, and all of them
at a maximum of 24-bit color, making it unfit even for applications that
involve only 2D rendering -- suffice it to say, gaming performance was so
abysmal that even GLQuake slowed to a crawl with the little 4MB horror.

Intel's legacy of crappy IGPs is still with them, apparently, and, although
I cannot give a first-hand account for what you could expect with the
"Intel Extreme 2" IGP, I wouldn't advise you to have very high
expectations with regards to its performance in games.

Just a quick Googling, in fact, reveals that it is the opinion of many that
the ATi Mobility Radeon 7500 is faster than an Intel Extreme 2 IGP, and
that the closest equivalent would be a PCI GeForce 2 MX 200, which almost
anyone can tell you is a Bad Thing, unless your taste in graphics doesn't
far exceed Heretic 2.

I wouldn't expect *any* integrated graphics processors, short of the
GeForce 4 MX chipset included with some AMD motherboards based on the
nForce chipset, to offer any tolerable performance in games. So then, my
advice is to stay away. Stay far away.
--
Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information
available.

- Benford's Law of Controversy