shared memory

[Steve]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 12:36:09 -0500, John McGregor
<mr.mcgregor-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >Can one assume that 'shared memory' implies that there is  an Intel  'Extreme
> >Graphic' chip set on the motherboard? Are there other chip sets that make use
> >of this shared memory?
> >Is the amount of the shared memory depending  on the total installed RAM?
> >
> 
> There are basicly two types of motherboards -- integrated and
> non-integrated. In the integrated boards, video, sound, nics, modems are
> all included on the board itself rather than being separate add in pci
> cards et al.The chipsets for the motherboards can be made by various
> maunfacturers with the more common ones being Intel, SIS, Nvidia and
> ATI. The advantage to integrated boards is that they generally cost less
> as a total solution than a box that uses a non-integrated board.. The
> disadvantage is the memory that is shared with the video card. If the
> video card is slated to use <= 32MB, then the performance hit that you
> can expect in a 512 MB system will be negligible. If on the other hand
> the card is configured to use 128MB, the performance hit can be
> substantial, especially in graphics intensive applications.What may be
> confusing you is that a standard add in video card is supplied with its
> own memory chips and has no need to access system memory.
> 
> John

I've also heard that sometimes the video quality is degraded when
using and integrated video motherboard. I'd always suggest using a
dedicated videocard when your budget allows (you can get a decent AGP
card for under $100 anyway).

Most integrated video motherboards come with an AGP slot and allow you
to disable the onboard video if/when you want to install a video card.
Make sure the board has this disable feature though.

HTH.

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