[Watford] New machine

[David Edmondson]

On 28 June 2012, at 5:08pm, Alain Williams wrote:
>> Time is money - will you spend more than £100 of time looking? :-)
> 
> That is not quite the point. I do things quite often just to learn.

Understood.

>>> Video cards, I am not interested in lots of graphics, but on motherboard
>>> graphics uses system RAM - which will presumably slow the system down. So paying
>>> #25-30 ish for a modest card might seem worth it.
> 
> Does on motherboard graphics slow the system. I would guess so, but by how much ?

Compared to what? Most of the motherboard graphics solutions do use system memory, but they are also generally low-end, so it's not obvious what you would compare them to from a graphics perspective. As to whether general memory operations are slower if you're using shared memory graphics compared with not, I don't know. But, I'd bet that you'll struggle to detect a difference in general use. Losing a relatively small amount of RAM for graphics seems insignificant in a 32G system, if that's your concern.

Whilst I understand that you don't want to open the case once it's built, you could always add a distinct graphics card later if the motherboard based approach doesn't work.