is integrated graphics good enough?

cyberstar

I understand that if I buy a PC with a graphics card it will be good for playing games. However I'm not planning to play any games on it, but I will be using it for photoshop, and dreamweaver for web design/graphics work.

So would having a PC with integrated graphics be enough?

banger9365

games no unless there old,photoshop and dreamweaver should be ok and normall pc work
it hard to tell with integrated graphics unless there the new ones that nvidia and intel have done ,the older ones are not that good realy put saying that lappy one's are very good

BillScarab

Integrated graphics should be fine for what you want. Most graphics cards are not good for games either, the main advantage of a seperate graphics card for what you want is that it will have it's own memory so won't use any system RAM.

For playing games there are relatively few cards that are any good and they all cost a lot of cash.

Personally I prefer a seperate graphics card even if it's just a basic non-games one but integrated graphics is OK so long as you have plenty of RAM.

neilwoods

Integrated graphics for photoshop will work, but the machine will struggle and be slow, especially if you have more than 1 adobe program open at the same time.

If you have bought photoshop :rolleyes: , then you may as well buy a seperate graphic card for an extra £60 or so

Poppycat

If it was me I would buy a cheap graphics card about £40 for what you want rather than have integrated graphics

Farway

I concur with neilwoods, I have photoshop and once you get creative the files can get huge with layer after layer and your machine will struggle along

get a seperate card

gremlin666_2

BillScarab wrote: »

Integrated graphics should be fine for what you want. Most graphics cards are not good for games either, the main advantage of a seperate graphics card for what you want is that it will have it's own memory so won't use any system RAM.

For playing games there are relatively few cards that are any good and they all cost a lot of cash.

Personally I prefer a seperate graphics card even if it's just a basic non-games one but integrated graphics is OK so long as you have plenty of RAM.

I think you will find that graphics cards are good for playing games. PC's are more powerfull than any of the consoles at the minute and yes some are alot of money but there are now some good cheapish ones on the market the Nvidia 8800gt is a godd example.

Tallymanjohn

Whatever graphice you decide on, but especially if you choose integrated, make sure you have a lot of memory - RAM. Vista needs at least 2Gb to run well and Adobe needs a lot of memory as well. RAM is fairly cheap at the moment so there's no reason for manufacturers to cut corners with it.

weegie.geek

The stuff you're working on in photoshop will be stored in the main ram, not the video card's ram. The only way using onboard will slow you down is because of the shared ram, but since you'll be sharing 128MB of main ram with the video card (any more is pointless really) you'd only notice the slowdown if you had a relatively small amount of ram anyway.

Personally I'd prefer a cheap £20 card to most onboard graphics. Most onboard graphics will struggle to play HD content, for example.

BillScarab

gremlin666 wrote: »

I think you will find that graphics cards are good for playing games. PC's are more powerfull than any of the consoles at the minute and yes some are alot of money but there are now some good cheapish ones on the market the Nvidia 8800gt is a godd example.

Yes, but I said MOST graphics cards are not good for gaems which is true. To play modern games at a decent res with good detail you need at least an Nvidia 8800GT or 9600GT or an ATI 3850 or 3870. Anything less than that is going to be far from ideal. Try playing Crysis on an 8400GS for example.

spakkker

I tried the crysis demo on my 8400gs and it did run but I'm not a gamer- it wouldn't even run on a friends on-board G31 graphics even though his cpu is E2160 @2700mhz