Making onboard graphics faster

[skotyo]

Hey im running my pc on onboard graphics, its meant to be Ati HD4200, which is pretty fast 4 onboard, but it actually runs games really slow. Is there anyway 2 dedicate more memory 2 it or make it go faster? My system specs are AMD athlonII x2 2.8ghz, 4gigs DDR2 800 and im running on Windows 7 64bit. Any ideas? Would the bios of my MB have anything 2do with it?

 

[wa1]

i think there's nothing u can do with it... Basically, Onboard is not meant to play games...

 

[Aneesh@4GHz]

no.Its just an onboard,Buy a gfx card if u need more perofmance!

 

[deadlockedworld]

You need to buy a graphics card if you want to play games. No matter how good your onboard graphics are--they are still slower than almost all discrete cards.

Check out tom's graphics hierarchy chart:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-310-5970,2491-7.html

Once you find your card, scroll up until you find the HD 4650. That is about the minimum power card you would want to use for gaming. (its about $50 on newegg)

We can help you pick a card if you let us know what your price range for a purchase and power supply are.

 

[kiren]

As everyone else has said onboard graphics are going to be quite limited for games, they're intended primarily for web surfing, playing movies etc. If you have any interest in gaming get a discrete card, I'd go with a Radeon 4670 or better (start at $70ish on newegg) depending what your budget is you might want something better.

That said some radeon igp's have 'sideport' memory in addition to shared memory. If yours does there should be a bios setting to enable sideport only, shared only, or both. This can have some effect on performance, but regardless will not equal a real card.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/790gx-graphics-sideport,2088.html?xtmc=sideport&xtcr=2

 

[gamerk316]

HEck, even a Geforce 9400 is a significant upgrade for onboard users. Onboard is meant for PC's that will never run games, period.

 

[skotyo]

I updated my drivers and that helped alot, i played a few good games but the current top games i had 2 get a graphics card, or play on 800x600.. so workd 2 a certain extent, ati on board graphics are pretty good