Is on board video and audio good?

[Joey]

My dad and I went to a computer show a few weeks ago and found a nice pc we were thinking of building. it was an asus motherboard i think, with a pentium 4 2.4 ghz processor. we were gonna get a 40gb hard drive i think and some other stuff. we were building it ourselves. now the motherboard has on board video and audio. is the video and audio good? would the video be able to handle newer games that have come out? same question with the audio.

also, i got these new games for christmas that say a video card that says you need direct x 8.1 compliant drivers. the game wont work on my pc and i have a voodoo 3 2000 i think. would the game work with the onboard video for this mother board?

[jrfritz]

Usuall it is good...I have onboard audio but I have a graphics card...

The only way to know if yours is good is to look in the BIOS setup...but thats dangerous...

[gpm]

Funny, Joey.. you're planning to build a fairly close replica of my system! A Pentium 4 2.4 GHz on an ASUS motherboard with a 40 GB hard drive..

I have an ASUS P4S8X motherboard, and its onboard audio is quite good, but its video on the other hand.. lets just say would be a lot better with an add-on video card. That's also why the P4S8X has an 8x AGP slot -- so you can run the fastest video cards out there. The video card I went with is a GeForce4 MX440, which cost me $80 on http://www.tigerdirect.com, and it takes care of all of my video needs (runs Halflife pretty nicely I think)

So, in response to your question, I would doubt that the game would work with onboard video, and you might have to shell out a little more for a video card. But while you were at it building a new system anyway, you might as well go all out...

[Zonkie]

I don't think onboard sound is much of a problem (except if you are planning to do a lot of audio things on your pc, such as connection instruments to it, for which you need a good sound card), but a graphics onboard is more of a problem. It might be a good one, but graphics cards are usually much better. Also, if you want to upgrade your pc graphics later on, it is much easier if you have a seperate graphics card. There are cheap graphics cards around that work fast enough, like the GeForce MX440 that Adam mentioned or the MX460. If you have the chance, I would suggest going for a seperate graphics card rather than an onboard one.

[Joey]

yah my dad wants a geforce 4. ill try and talk him into it. ;D

[jrfritz]

Dads actually play computer games/use the computer for other things other than boxing news ? ???

[rwfromxenon]

Oh, god yes.
My dad is addicted to Myst and the bad thing is so am I... ;D
And what is wrong with that?

[jrfritz]

When I played games...I had myst...but I never liked it....

[Joey]

the only game i know of that my dad plays is unreal tournament. he plays that online with his friend.

[Zonkie]

Hey, cool! But there you have a perfect reason to buy a Geforce 4 card, possibly even the Ti4200 or Ti4600. Because if he likes Unreal Tournament, he will probably also like UT2003, which will run best on a computer with a fast graphics card (provided the other hardware isn't too bad either).

I loved Myst when I had it because it always fascinated me the way everything was so logical... ::). I remember holding my electronical instrument tuner (the thing that recognises a note for you) in front of my speakers to solve that riddle in the rocket with the piano ;D. But my favourite one was that with the water pipes!

[gpm]

I hated Myst... still do...

Only last year I figured out how to get off the original stinkin island... I just didn't put any time into it because it wasn't satisfying to me like Civilization 2 or Master of Orion (1 and 2) were.

[smartguy240]

The thing that so sucks about myst is that you spend like 30hrs trying to figure all that **** out and then at the end you realize that you couldhaave beaten it in about 10 mins...makes me sick...

[Zonkie]

Hey, I loved that part of the game. I thought it was one of the most terrific endings I ever saw in a computer game, just because it was something different from the "and they lived happily ever after" stuff.

@SMG: I wonder why that makes you sick... Do you play a game to have fun doing so, or do you only play it to reach the end as quickly as possible? For the second option, for most games there are cheats, but Myst was about having fun solving the puzzles. Of course its not everyone's favourite thing to sit for hours until a puzzle is solved, but there are really people who would play the game again and solve all the islands before they actually take the final page, just for the fun of it and because they spent their money on a mind-boggling game, not a 10 minute clicking-around.

[smartguy240]

It is a 10 min click around...i try to both beat them and to do it in awhile


all you have to do to win is to get the switches up and get teh white page...then enter in 153 or what ever it is in the fire place..and you win...or at least that is what i got out of it....

[Eero Ränik]

Integrated video/audio's quality is always much worser than separate cards'.
About Myst: I like it because it has got wonderful graphics and sound. But I really can't say that buttons and levers are entertaining.