Not only are you running in half the RAM, but part of that RAM isn't 
even available to Windows. Onboard video borrows a segment of the RAM 
installed on the board to do its rendering in, unlike an offboard card 
that carries its own RAM with it. Second point is that an onboard video 
processor is a shared part of the northbridge chip, and typically isn't 
nearly as powerful as a dedicated GPU. An add-in graphics card will 
improve your performance on both fronts. Get a nice-sized PCI-Express 
graphics card, and perhaps some more RAM as well to bring your system 
back up to your old specs. Upgrading to Service Pack 2 will also help 
with stability issues. Make sure you are also running the lastest 
security fixes above and beyond SP 2, and the latest drivers for both 
the motherboard chipset and the graphics card. Best of luck. :)

Greg Purvis wrote:
> Hi
>
> My computer system finally got old and it crashed. I asked a local 
> repair shop for a replacement of whatever hardware needed to be 
> replaced so that the computer would perform at least as well as before.
> I got a motherboard with a video 'card' built into it, to replace my 
> ASUS card, and now my DVDs are jumpy, the system hangs a lot with 
> black screen, contents of windows take up to a minute to refresh, and 
> I can't see text clearly in several programs.
>
> The motherboard is a ASUS Skt. AM2, GF6150, M.ATX, 2PCI/PCI-e  .
> I'm using a PC with an XP Pro OS, service pack 1.
>
> It needs some serious tweaking.  I need advice, and to find tutorials 
> that will guide me. First, I need a background understanding of what's 
> different about the combination motherboard-video card, from the 
> earlier style of components, why this is better (or worse), and what 
> typical pitfalls exist which I, a dunce, should be looking to avoid.
>
> Also, I had 1 gig RAM in the old system, and when this new board went 
> in, the store gave me only half that RAM.  I thought they were adding 
> this 512 RAM to what I already had (I forgot to ask if they were 
> planning to upgrade with new hardware to match previous system 
> performance by reducing the RAM by half).
> I'm mentioning this because I suspect this cut in Memory might be 
> contributing to the overall problems.  I'm hoping for information that 
> will help me be clear on a few basic facts, so I have some place to 
> get started. I don't have much familiar background understanding yet.
>
> Thanks in advance for any and all help.
> GP
>
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