Do you need a good video card for basic computing?

For basic computing, what are the advantages of a good video card? Basic computing being MS Office, watching DVDs, Photoshop... no 3d stuff.



Are there no advantages over onboard graphics?|||Onboard graphics should be ample for what you want, you only really need cards for gaming and high end graphics applications like autocad.|||any old graphics card can be used for ms office but one that's a little better will be needed to watch dvd's the main reason is you need 32 bit colour as for photo shop it's a still image so virtually anything will do

the main advantage of on board graphics is it's cheaper to produce a computer with on board graphics than fitting a dedicated one same applies to on board sound|||the only difference from onboard and add in card, is you can expand by replacing or even adding another car, its hard to say exactly what kind of onboard video you have, if its an older computer say over a year or 2, then your chances are simi ok. then again you can even put a add in card thats less then whats onboard, you can always attempt to run the apps. but the baseline performance will be result of a few things, you can only go as fast as the slowest thing.|||No not really. The only other factor would be the SIZE of your Screen. If you have a bigger size screen and you try to watch a fast movie Movie on it, the basic graphic card might not keep up. But in most cases it should.



Games are the main thing that need bigger graphic cards.|||in one word NO



windows vista 3d functions require at least 64 mb video mem thats all|||basica computing onboard works fine now the watching dvd's that might be a push you might want something nicer But everything else you dont need much. good luck.|||Depending on how old your onboard graphics is the only advantage in installing a new video card is if you want to watch high definition videos (eg blu ray)on your computer. A separate card will take alot of the strain from your processor.|||most on-board cards these days are quite capable of doing what you need. You would only need the discrete cards if (like others mentioned) you planned on running games as well. However, there are a few hangups here. If you are going to watch HD videos, then you would want a seperate card ... preferrably an nvidia 9xxx series or ati 3xxx series because these cards take all of the strain off of the cpu for HD decoding. Also, if you plan on running a 30" screen, you will want a dedicated card. Other than that, no you don't need one.|||I just bought two new cards for my two PC's which are a bit older. I need the cards in order to drive the native resolutions of new LCD displays. The onboard chips couldn't drive the resolutions I needed.