Those who have a really tight budget and perhaps not weigh the graphical performance very heavily might wonder what alternative is actualy the best one. A really cheap graphics card or a motherboard with an integrated graphics circuit. At LegitReviews they’ve taken ATI and NVIDIA’s absolutely cheapest graphics cards, Radeon X300 and GeForce 6200TC, both costing about $50, and compared them to an ECS motherboard with ATI’s RS482 chipset, sporting an integrated X300 graphics circuit. The motherboard costs about $60, which is one of the cheapest ones you can find for the Socket 939 platform.
Despite the relativaly poor graphics cards there is no doubt that an external graphics card is better than integrated solution when talking games and 3D performance. The integrated circuit with the RS482 chipset doesn’t stand a chance against the two, after all, really budget cards. Once again we’ve had it confirmed that integrated graphics circuits are mainly to be used with office applications, nothing else.
