Greater Graphics

$100 Cards Bump Up Performance, on a Budget

After running a series of tests using the Graphics Media Accelerator 950 chip that was integrated in the PC's Intel 945G chip set, we upgraded the system with two PCI Express graphics cards: first the $99 XFX GeForce 6600 and then the $102 Sapphire Radeon X1300. The GMA 950 is the fastest integrated graphics chip Intel currently offers, and the two boards we tried are among the least expensive mainstream cards available. Although the two boards include recent GPUs, they use 256MB of DDR2 (not DDR3) memory to keep the price down. Both support dual monitors.

Head to Head

Although we again used games to put the Sapphire, XFX, and integrated graphics options through their paces, we also applied WorldBench 5, which employs a range of programs in testing. This way, we could get a reasonable idea of the performance increase to be derived in everyday tasks.

Adding XFX's card boosted the Dell test system's WorldBench 5 score to 88, an improvement of about 5 percent over the score with the integrated graphics. The Sapphire card's gain was more modest, increasing the WorldBench 5 score to 86, a plus of about 2 percent. Though both dedicated budget cards made daily tasks slightly faster, we were happily surprised at how the integrated graphics stood up in our tests.

As expected, gaming got the most gains. Our test system could not run Battlefield 2 with the integrated graphics, but it was able to achieve a very smooth 43 frames per second with the XFX and a barely playable 25 fps with the Sapphire. Half-Life 2 also seriously improved from the unplayable 11 fps achieved with the integrated graphics, which also had problems rendering some effects.

These test results suggest that even an inexpensive graphics card can make your upgradable PC with integrated graphics faster. A new card can definitely provide you with more output options, as well, such as S-Video-out and multiple monitor connections. Gaming certainly receives the greatest benefit: Although neither card was as quick as the much more expensive models we tested, both produced improvements over the integrated graphics.

In short, we found that even an upgradable PC with newer integrated graphics could achieve modest gains with a $100 card. Moreover, it's clear that such an addition should give an older upgradable system built with less-modern integrated graphics new power and a new lease on life.

Richard Baguley