Looking to purchase new computer.
Looking at all the weekend ads, almost all of the deals offered
include integrated graphics.

My question??

Are the integrated grapics being ofered on these new machine
sufficient to run flight sim programs, or do you really need a
seperate card. Also trying to keep within budget, if buying a card I
see reference to direct x. If i buy a card, do i need to concern
myself with the latest issue of direct x.

TIA

Ludlow, Tomball TX

In article >,
(Ludlow Johnson) wrote:

> Are the integrated grapics being ofered on these new machine
> sufficient to run flight sim programs

While integrated graphics are better than they used to be, you
should certainly not rely on them to be able to run anything
but the simplest of recent games & sims without making serious
compromises.

> If i buy a card, do i need to concern
> myself with the latest issue of direct x

It's usually a good idea to keep fairly up to date with dx.
The whole point of dx is to allow sims to send simple
instructions to the card so it can do increasingly complex
things in purpose-built hardware. So a new card will come with
its own drivers (usually best to visit the manufacturer's
website and use the latest drivers instead of those supplied)
which will make use of a fairly recent, if not exactly up to
date, version of dx.

While there are no flight sims used directly in the following
link, it's a useful site to get an idea about how recent
hardware performs. Not sure it has any integrated chipsets on
the list though... I think the Nvidia mx440 is quite common
onboard, but that's getting a bit long in the tooth now,
especially for something like FS2004.

Anyway...
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html
....may be some use to you. Or it might just confuse you even
more than I've done :-) But you need to get up to speed a
little before parting with your money, and that's as good a
place to start as any.

Ah, just put integrated graphics into Google and the first few
links are more direct help to you. So try a few of these...
http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=
UTF-8&q=integrated+graphics

Andrew McP

I agree with the comments from Andrew.



I have also been working out the specs that I need for a top notch sim
machine.



While convenient, the onboard graphics will slow you down in comparison to a
separate dedicated board. With all the math calculations required by flight
sims, the processor needs as little other stuff to worry about as possible.



You might want to consider checking out a copy of Maximum PC on the
newsstand or at http://www.maximumpc.com. Like the tag line states, they go
right to the meat without much BS.



Good luck in your search.



Chris

"Ludlow Johnson" > wrote in message
...
>
> Looking to purchase new computer.
> Looking at all the weekend ads, almost all of the deals offered
> include integrated graphics.
>
> My question??
>
> Are the integrated grapics being ofered on these new machine
> sufficient to run flight sim programs, or do you really need a
> seperate card. Also trying to keep within budget, if buying a card I
> see reference to direct x. If i buy a card, do i need to concern
> myself with the latest issue of direct x.
>
> TIA
>
> Ludlow, Tomball TX

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 23:54:39 GMT, Ludlow Johnson
> wrote:

>
>Looking to purchase new computer.
>Looking at all the weekend ads, almost all of the deals offered
>include integrated graphics.
>
>My question??
>
>Are the integrated grapics being ofered on these new machine
>sufficient to run flight sim programs, or do you really need a
>seperate card. Also trying to keep within budget, if buying a card I
>see reference to direct x. If i buy a card, do i need to concern
>myself with the latest issue of direct x.
>
>TIA
>
>Ludlow, Tomball TX

Don't buy a PC with integrated graphics. I see most stores sell these
crap PC's with integrated graphics and sound, usually suing PC Chips
mb's. Those mb's are dirt cheap and probably cost them about $40.00,
thrown in a cheap 5400rpm HDD, crap Mitsumi cdrom drive some cheap ass
sdram and a Celeron or Duron cpu and they have a dirt cheap PC to
sell. I could build one of those for next to nothing but they are not
much good for gaming, except strat games that use 2D graphics. If you
want to do 3D gaming then spend a bit more and either build your own
or buy something more beefy with a higher end video card like a Radeon
9600pro or higher.

"Ludlow Johnson" > wrote in message
...
> Are the integrated grapics being ofered on these new machine
> sufficient to run flight sim programs

Why not read the replies to the thread you started the first time you posted
that question?

Integrated graphics should work ok if it is a good device.
It is worth while finding out if the mainboard has an AGP slot so upgrading
will not present a problem.
As for your question regarding direct x, I run DX9b on a DX8.0 graphics card
with no problem & as far as my personal experience on these issues go, i
think there is no real comatibilty issue but somebody please tell me
different if i'm wrong on that one.
"Ludlow Johnson" > wrote in message
...
>
> Looking to purchase new computer.
> Looking at all the weekend ads, almost all of the deals offered
> include integrated graphics.
>
> My question??
>
> Are the integrated grapics being ofered on these new machine
> sufficient to run flight sim programs, or do you really need a
> seperate card. Also trying to keep within budget, if buying a card I
> see reference to direct x. If i buy a card, do i need to concern
> myself with the latest issue of direct x.
>
> TIA
>
> Ludlow, Tomball TX