Hardware New Intel Integrated vs Old Dedicated Graphics card

[Jamstruth]

A friend of mine recently bought himself a new computer (which I personally think is a bit of a ripoff compared to even my parent's laptop) with the following specs.
[quote = "Advent DT2204 Desktop"]Processor Pentium® Dual Core Processor G630 (2.70 Ghz, 3MB cache)
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
RAM 6GB (4GB +2GB), DDR3, 1333Mhz, Maximum expandable memory 16GB
Hard drive 1 TB, (variable) Seagate
Optical disk drive Multiple CD/DVD player 16xDVD, 48xCDR, 24xRW / recorder 24x DVD -/+R, 8x DL -/+R, 8x +RW, 6x -RW, 12x -RAM
USB 9 (3 front, 6 rear)
Modem/Ethernet 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
Audio interface 3 x 3.5mm
Expansion card slot 1 x PCIe x 16, 1 x PCIe x 1
[/quote]
That cost £320 without even an i3 processor. Then again I'm not the best at telling what's a decent buy. Maybe this is a decent deal for a prebuilt computer?

Anyway it has an Intel Graphics 1000 (GT1) chip in it. Which CPUZ says has an 850MHz core and 874MB of RAM available to it.

I know Intel have stepped up their game in terms of graphics a lot these days but I was wondering if for any kind of gaming he might be better off with even my old DX9 card (a GeForce 7900GS which I believe has 256MB of VRAM and a 4xxMHz processor). The main problem with the card is that he wouldn't get any DX10/11 stuff and no hardware acceleration stuff. I remember when I bought the card DX9 was still widely supported despite the switchover to DX10 being underway (I was running XP anyway). No idea if this is still the case or if many devs are switching off support for DX9 cards.

After doing a bit of research I think he might be better with his integrated but I'm curious as to what you guys think? Tbh I'd forgotten just how old the card was.

 

[Originality]

Intel HD 1000? I thought it went straight from GMA HD to HD 2000/3000 (3000 for K series and laptops).

 

[Jamstruth]

http://www.foxconnch...&U=en-us0000554
That's the motherboard he has. It doesn't actually say what the integrated graphics are called. Its the Intel H61 chips.

Might not have had the HD actually... no. CPUZ just says Intel Graphics 1000 (GT1) My bad.

 

[Lanlan]

I think that's the Intel HD 2000 graphics. The CPU is alright as a CPU but the graphics kinda blow. I think the Nvidia card is slightly better than the integrated graphics

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[Originality]

H61 = whatever IGP is in the CPU. In your case, I think that's the HD 2000, which is not bad, but below par for current era gaming. It's roughly on the same level as a HD 4200 or GT 520, except Intel has the worst driver support (for graphics) in the world. Intel HD 3000 can play Crysis on minimum, but can't even play Spiral Knights.

Any discreet graphics card will provide better performance, and you can find some very cheap like the GT 450 for around £50.

 

[Lanlan]

Off topic, but my APU's integrated graphics can play Crysis on high

oh and my gm4500 laptop can play spiral knights

 

[Originality]

The more I think about it, the more £320 sounds about right for that system. The only significant difference between the G630 and Core i3 is HyperThreading. G630 is dual core, i3 is dual core + 2 logical cores - same thing with i5 and i7 only with quad cores... or at least that's how I remember it. Add to that all the basic parts of a system, and the labour for a pre-built system, and it's what you'd expect.

And nobody cares about Spiral Knights anymore :3 ... or Crysis for that matter.

 

[Wizerzak]

Off topic, but my APU's integrated graphics can play Crysis on high

oh and my gm4500 laptop can play spiral knights

Yeah and so can a 10 year-old laptop, just at 2 frames per second.

 

[Lanlan]

Yeah it's not as good as a homemade system for that price, but OEM it's okay. Pair it with a decent graphics card and it'll perform quite well. Also, not very important but that CPU only supports 1066 mhz ram i think.