When you buy a new pre-built computer from somewhere; ‘chances are that the display is generated by the northbridge of the 2-part (Northbridge, southbridge.) chipset on the motherboard, and is around 64-128MB. (With some boards I’ve known it to be up to 256MB.)

Although this may be quite enough for general-computing usage; such as word-processing, instant-messaging, etc, (In fact around 10MB graphics capability will cover most of that type of thing. (-Just)) when it comes to video; such as animations, as playing games and watching TV, for instance, it may fall short of the required mark and cause the picture to jerk, stall, not form correctly, or even cause a BSOD in rare cases.

This is where a graphics card is useful. The relatively simple process of fitting a graphics card, plus a lot more information, is covered in the article “The Graphics Card”.

Another thing about onboard graphics is that it steals system RAM. That’s fine if you don’t use your computer for any extensive tasks or run many tasks at once. However if, for instance, you were to go out and buy a machine running Windows Vista – a notorious memory-hogger of an operating system – that has 250 MB onboard graphics and 1 GB RAM fitted, then that only leaves you with 750 MB or maybe less spare unused RAM that Vista will instantly consume, require more, and run slowly as a result.

Here a graphics card would be a bonus, as it would free the extra 250MB and give you a whole 1GB for vista to consume. (Personally I recommend using 2GB RAM minimum when running Vista. I use 2GB DDR2 to run XP, and when intensive operations are running a lot of that is used. For instance the other day as I opened Firefox with god-knows-how-many windows open I noticed the available RAM go right down to 64MB. Vista eats RAM: Use as much as you can with it.) Even if you only have a 64MB shared-graphics-usage; that’s pretty low and could do with a boost. Also you’d reclaim the 64 megs back to system RAM by fitting a graphics card.

If you’re intending to play the latest and next generation of games then I recommend a top-spec graphics card with at least 256MB graphics RAM in a machine running the latest Intel multi-core processor and DDR3 RAM. (In my opinion XP is a better OS for games than Vista. Windows 7 will probably be better still; but we’ll have to wait for the RTM release to know that for sure.)

A graphics card is always a useful thing to have installed in your computer. Personally I have a graphics card in both of my machines: I have what is known as a turbocharged  graphics card in both machines (The one linked (64-256MB) in the older machine, and a 128-500MB card in the newer-build machine.): That means that the card has a certain amount of graphics RAM onboard the card itself; so under normal circumstances it utilises that, leaving the system memory free for the rest of the system to utilise. When it needs more RAM than it has onboard for whatever reason; maybe it’s displaying a video or animation that is a bit more taxing, it goes to system RAM and borrows the extra.

This is good for me because I’m not a gamer, so I don’t usually need more RAM than is built-in to the graphics card; therefore my 2GB system RAM is commonly unaffected. For gamers, however, this would cause problems, as having to keep transferring data between the graphics card and the borrowed system RAM would take too long and would slow the frame-rate considerably.

In conclusion, then; if you’re a gamer you need a graphics card no matter what (Not a turbocharged graphics card.): No questions asked. If you’re not a gamer though, I still advise you to get one for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.

Performance-boost your system today: Fit a graphics card.

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