What is the advantage/disadvantage of havng a motherboard with the video and sound technologies on board instead of on a PCI/AGP board?
This question would be better served under General Questions, or even better at a message board dedicated to computer issues.
I’ll still give you my two cents though. The disadvantages:
[ul]
[li]the components are almost always of inferior quality to the ones you would have chosen yourself.[/li][li]it adds to the cost of the motherboard[/li][li]This one is only a guideline: It indicates a lower quality motherboard. The good ones are made for people who build their own systems, and they almost always want to choose their own parts[/li][li]Often the motherboard will not have an AGP slot, or enough PCI slots if it has the built in components[/li][/ul]
The advantages:
[ul]
[li]Don’t have to worry about hardware compatibility[/li][li]Assuming it has the proper slots, you can always upgrade later[/li][li]Hi Opal[/li][/ul]
I myself would always prefer to spend the money for a good quality motherboard than to get the “value priced” ones which are the ones which usually have the onboard sound and video.
pros:
cheaper motherboard
cons:
cheaper motherboard (you get what you pay for)
incompatibility issues if upgrading later.
less resources available for slots (usually on-board circuits get a dedicated IRQ line)
Pros: easier to sell to someone who doesn’t have a clue.
One of my big pet peeves is that an on-board graphics chipset on some motherboards I’ve seen will exclusively use system RAM. If you have an 8MB AGP on board chipset and 64 MB of RAM, there will only be 56MB of RAM available to the OS. There really isn’t 8MB of RAM on board for the graphics chipset, it takes it away from the system RAM. GRRRRR! I hate that. But, if you have a separate AGP graphics card, it will have it’s own memory built into it, so you do not have this problem. I bought a system with on-board video and sound about 2 years ago, and while it was cheap then (student budget), now I wish I could upgrade the video and sound cards.
If you have a choice, get a PCI/AGP motherboard and get the other components separately. One of the best things you can do for a computer is get a good graphics card, and with on-board video, you usually don’t have the choice of upgrading later.