On 14 Mar 99, at 12:48, Jennifer Irvine wrote:

> I just bought my first computer and did not know what accelerator graphic
> cards were when I got it .My motherboard manual says I have a "built in
> 64bit 3D AGP Graphics Accelerator with 8MB frame buffer".Would that be my
> graphic card or is that something else?Because it says "BUILT IN" I guess
> Im suck with it.My manual cover says "PC100 PentiumII mainboard M747"and
> the proccessor is a Pentiumll 350.If I do not have a card can one be added
> to this set up?                      Thanks Tim

  This circuitry is on the motherboard itself; odds are pretty good that
if you install a video card, the system will disable the stuff on the
motherboard and use the card instead "automatically".
  On the down side, this means that you've paid for a video card you
might not want to use, but can't move to another machine or trade to a
buddy -- most people who are into building/upgrading PCs prefer to
avoid built-in components like this.
  On the up side, a 64bit 3D accelerator with 8 MB of RAM is more than
the vast majority of users ever need.  If you are heavily into QUake or
other 3D games, you *might* want something better, but odds are good
that for Internet, word processing, and other common uses, you'll be
hard pressed to find something better that is also inexpensive.

  SO the bottom line is that you *could* add a video card, but it would
have to be fairly expensive for it to make any improvement over what
you have.




David G

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