Dimension 4700 and GMA900

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

don't know if i can help much, but i would suggest going with even a
low buck graphics card rather then integrated graphics. dedicated or
not. if your not going to play games(at least the most demanding ones)
a low end graphics card like the fx 5200 will do you just fine and will
most likely out perform the gma900. especially if you will primarily be
using it for the non-gaming applications you mention above. and even
for games it's got enough pep to keep up with games like halo, call of
duty, gta: vice city, madden 2004, ect. just keep your drivers up to
date. and it has passive cooling, so there's no fan noise. that could
be a plus. a friend of mine also uses my computer for some graphic
design classes and likes what the card does for her software. so like i
said above, i don't know if this helps. i have not seen the new
integrated graphics in action. but so long as your not a hardcore
gamer, a low buck graphics card solution like the fx 5200 or equivilant
should give you the performance you want.and need.

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

the 4700 with integrated graphics comes with a pci express video card slot
for future expansion. when purchased with a pci express video card there is
no integrated graphics port. so it seems to me that you have nothing to
loose by going with the integrated graphics as you can always upgrade to a
'real' pci express video card... and those will only get better and cheaper
(not many choices available right now).

"Ponkan" <amai_ponkan@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:86fcec4b.0412160157.4c89c75d@posting.google.com...
> Hello ALL.
>
> I intend to purchase a Dimension 4700 (or 5000) configured as follow:
>
> P4 530 3.0GHz
> 512MB DDR2 400MHz
> 80 GB SATA HD
> GMA900 integrated graphics chip
>
> I have never had the opportunity to see the GMA900 working in "real
> life". I have only read some articles around the web and I could see
> that in terms of 3D gaming, the GMA900 is worse than the worst of
> dedicated graphics card. I do not intend to use this PC for gaming (at
> least not the lastest games) but only for DVD/DivX visualization, kids
> games, educational softwares and 2D/3D CAD (electronics CAD, so I
> suppose the bottle neck for this application will be in the processor
> and memory side). I know that even the simplest graphics cards like
> the FX5200 has a hardware MPEG decoder integrated. Do you think that
> the GMA900 has an equivalent performance in what concerns video
> decoding? Sure, I am not expecting an 100% dedicated hardware decoder
> performance, but at least something that allows me to watch a video
> smoothly.
>
> I have also read that in terms of 2D performance the GMA900 can be
> very competitive with low-end cards like the PCIe one proposed by Dell
> (X300). Has anyone already used the GMA900 for the purposes I have
> written above and is willing to share his/her opinions?
>
> I would feel more confident if I purchased this PC with a graphics
> card (even a low-end one) but as my budget is pretty small I would
> like to save some money and I was expecting to buy with the GMA900. In
> fact, I prefer spending my little money in purchasing some memory and
> a good CPU. On the other hand, I am afraid that the performance of the
> GMA900 is so bad (I don't think so according with what I have read)
> that in the end I would have more trouble and more money spent. In my
> work, I have a Dell equiped with the first Extreme Graphics chip and
> it works fine for my 2D CAD application. This is a good point and I
> hope that the GMA900 can do better than this.
>
> Thanks in advance and hope to hearing your opinions.