Hopefully easy question

[ppamment]

Hi all

I used to be very enthusiastic about my pc but have let it slide for the last while. I rarely game anymore, so graphics performace especially I'm uncertain about.
I currently have an nvidia 7600GT which is fine for me. Plays the odd game on ok settings if i fancy it, but mainly we're talking about a media, work and internet pc here.

I'm thinking of moving to i5 with h55/57. I know integrated graphics are always crippled, but we are several years down the line from when i bought my graphics card and gfx tech has exploded since then. Anyone have any idea how they might compare? I'm struggling to find any basis for comparison of the 2. I'm only looking for a very ballpark answer here

Many thanks

[kalniel]

It depends massively on the game - very simple games like WoW, guild wars etc. will certainly be playable. But they are still crippled compared to normal cards - the main problem is the integrated graphics are Intel rather than nVidia or ATI, so forget about anything using any amount of shaders etc.

[DanceswithUnix]

Depends on the age of the game you are playing.

At its best, the 7600GT is about the same speed as an 8600GT, which is an Nvidia part with 32 shaders and OK memory bandwidth. On more modern shader heavy games the 8600GT can be up to twice the speed of a 7600GT.

Nvidia integrated, 9300 or ION, is these days 16 shaders on the Intel platform, normally 8 shaders on AMD chipsets. Intel graphics are generally not as fast, though the latest on-cpu stuff sounds like it might overclock up to similar performance.

So, integrated might not stop you playing the games you are used to playing, but I would expect them to be generally slower, maybe even half speed (unless you were CPU limited before).

[McPhee]

With the price of GPUs being so cheap I'd recommend just picking one up anyway. A low to mid range card can be nabbed for under the £50 mark these days and it'll do justice to most games on the market (a decent amount of eye candy and a decent frame rate). Heck, I saw an offer for an ATi 4850 for £60 the other day and I can certainly vouch for the power of that card. I can max out Napoleon: Total War at 1440x900 on that

[kalniel]

Actually I might have to slightly take back what I said With enough CPU power the intel graphics are pulling closer to the ATI integrated ones:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3755&p=2

[shaithis]

But thats like arguing who came last and who came second-to-last in the London Marathon.......doesn't matter either way, they were both way too slow

You can see from kalniels link that they are all significantly slower then a 5450, one of the cheapest, lowest power cards currently available (~£35).

[scaryjim]

I'd go with the consensus - i.e. if you're building from new and you want to play games at all you might as well get a low-end discrete graphics card, even if it's a bottom-end HD5450.

As an aside, which i5 were you thinking? Since you're talking about integrated graphics I assume you're looking at the 600 series, but frankly if you're buying discrete graphics anyway they don't offer as good value as the i5 750. The i3 500s are the better option of the integrated Core iX series - from a value perspective, at least.

[Pob255]

Yes the only one to even vaguely consider is the i3, the i5 conroes are utter crud, over priced and not very good, heck they are just i3's with a higher speed.
The i5 750 is a much better cpu being an actual quad core not a hyperthreaded dual core, while yet cheaper and for the sake of £20-30 you can get a graphics card that will be better than the IGP

Yes this intel IGP is the first half decent one intel has made it the fact that it can just about keep pace with the nvidia and ati IGP's and it will cope with older games at lower resolutions.

For around £55 you should be able to get a 9600gt or 4670 and consider 2nd hand as you should be able to pick them up for around £30

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Of course if the OP is on a tighter budget they may also want to consider a Phenom II or an Athlon II based build. In multi-threaded tasks the Athlon II X4 620 or 630 tend to be ahead of a Core i3 530 and the processors and the motherboards tend to be cheaper too.

[ppamment]

Thanks for the responses. i5 750 is my pick of processor and i should be able to get it near 4Ghz I would hope. Paired with 4Gb CL6-7 1333 RAM and an ssd to boot off it should be extremely quick.
I can always drop my 7600GT into the new setup of course, so I think for now I'll pass on a new card. I care more about speed than gaming performance.
Would I be right in thinking that the onboard graphics may be a little smoother decoding HD videos than my 7600GT? After all I guess really thats what its designed for. Gaming is very much a secondary concern. The only "taxing" game iv checked out in the past few years is modern warfare 2 and the game i played most recently was diablo 2 lol

Thanks everyone

[DanceswithUnix]

Expect to fall back on the CPU to decode HD video, but you have *plenty* of CPU to fall back on there