Onboard Graphics Good Enough For Aero Interface?

Kintarō Hattori

Hey Guys,

I'm building a small system for the bedroom and I'd like to keep the expense and noise as low as possible. I'll be using a Micro-Atx motherboard and the vast majority of these come with some sort of onboard graphics.

Will one of these that supports 256MB be good enough for the Aero Interface with Vista which states that you need a card with 256MB of Ram to run it?

8T8

Yes but the integrated GPU must be a Direct-X 9 compatible GPU.

Those are;
ATI Xpress IGP
NVIDIA GeForce 6/7 IGP
Intel GMA 950/X3000

The amount of RAM is not as big of an issue as modern GPU's can make use of system RAM as needed to augment it so even if the GPU has only a tiny amount of local RAM or even none at all it can use the system RAM instead NVIDIA calls this Turbocache and ATI call it HyperMemory.

There is no actual 256MB limit, 256MB is the amount of RAM that is required for no resolution limitation with Aero enabled, if you have no access to system RAM and the local memory on the GPU is lower than 256MB then you will be limited by the resolution e.g 128MB with Aero enabled can go up to a max of 1600x1200, you can of course disable Aero and this will lift the resolution limitation.

Kintarō Hattori

Hi 8T8,

Many thanks yet again for your informed reply. There are a few options I can use, but I was thinking of going for the following:

Abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD

Mainly due to the fact that it's Abit and I need to have an optical output.

8T8

That board uses the ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 GPU which is DX9 so yes that will work just fine.

You will need 1GB of RAM as well to enable Aero given that it also uses the system RAM.

Kintarō Hattori

Hmnn I was thinking of sticking a 1GB stick in and allowing the onboard GPU 256MB, leaving 768MB free for Windows. I know the minimum is supposed to be 1GB but this will only be used for browsing the web, playing music and perhaps the odd movie. At some point later on I do plan on sticking in another 1GB.

Is it too tight? Could I get away with it?

8T8

It should not use 256MB outright it will only take as much as it needs for whatever resolution you set.

You could always just get a single 1GB stick and a cheap 256MB stick so the system's pool of RAM does not go under 1GB.

Of course check the motherboard manual beforehand to see if that configuration is permitted - it should be.

Kintarō Hattori

Thanks again 8T8.

beolight

just wondering if you bought this board in the end

if you did what observations you may have as considering same board for HTPC project