My dad has a pretty good desktop which could be a great gaming pc except for one thing - it doesn’t have a video/graphics card. I’m considering putting one in so I can play games on it when I’m at his place. I want to know if there’s any improvement in performance for the NON-gaming user by putting in an entry level(or just above) video card. If there isn’t I’d rather not waste money on a component that will be useful only very occasionally.
Digital file movie playback might be able to go higher res and be smoother than the onboard video. You might also get a small increase in overall video quality just for browsing, but it would be minor. A lot of this also depends on the video capabilities of the monitor re resolution and image quality.
In theory, the overall performance of the machine could improve, because the on board graphics interface would no longer be consuming a chunk of main memory - assuming the OS is capable of making use of that extra portion of RAM, it could make multitasking smoother, and memory - intensive operations faster.
Also, if the current graphics adapter is rendering even ordinary desktop stuff in software, performance could improve because this would be delegated to the GPU of the new card, partly freeing up the CPU for other tasks.
There’s also dual monitor support.
The integrated graphics chipsets on more modern processors support dual monitors. If he has say, a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor (HD-2000/2500/3000/4000) or an AMD APU (A4/6/8/10), they all have dual monitor capability. They are powerful enough too that buying a gaming card would give you no improvement in anything day to day. Netflix, Youtube, anything flash can be accelerated by your graphics card, but if he has enough CPU to make a decent gaming system they probably already run fine.
The CPU is the Sandy bridge i5(I think. There was definitely a bridge in the name).
Believe that has an HD4000 integrated for graphics. Good enough for Youtube and Netflix that a separate GPU wouldn’t make a difference.