Need help with video card selection for Simulator

C

codename47

Gawd
Joined
Mar 7, 2003
Messages
990
Hey my brother is installing a simulator training program for his road bike that has feedback for inclines and declines etc... He asked me to piece him together a small cheap PC to run the VR software and after some help in the forum I think I'm going to go with an Athlon II 260 or the like for the processor. However in order to keep the price down I was looking at a motherboard with onboard graphics HDMI output and I settled on the 4250HD from ATI on a cheap Biostar motherboard. However the software recommendations are for 256/512MB of non shared memory. Do you all think I can get away with running the 4250 for the graphics? I assumed a simulator game would use the processor more than the graphics card but I could be wrong. I feel like the specfiications are a little outdated and a 4250 would be sufficient to run the program... any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.

The software has the following information:

Recommended system resources
Processor: minimum Pentium IV (3.0 Ghz) / Pentium IV dual core 1.7Ghz
Memory: 1024 MB for XP, 2056 MB for Vista
Hard disc space: 850 MB
Graphics card: DirectX9 compatible 3D card with 256 MB of memory (not shared) GeForce FX or equivalent / Recommended 512MB of memory not shared
Sound card: DirectSound compatible
Various: 1 free USB port; DVD player (for use of Real Life Video & ErgoVideo only)
OS: Windows XP SP2 or Vista SP1 (32 bit)
Recommended internet connection: 2 MB downstream and 500 KB upstream (only for Multiplayer)
 
if the specs specifically mention the memory not to be shared it is probably a memory speed issue and i wouldn't trust onboard to work with it.

older games especially have issues dealing with the integrated shared memory..

considering too that you can get a cheap graphics card for a discrete solution and i wouldn't even risk it. (the 4350 discrete card is only 33$ on newegg)
 
Easy enough to buy the equipment and try it out, if it doesn't cut it with the software than fet a discrete card, but yeah those specs are kinda old and onboard gpu's have moved on.
 
kind of what I was thinking too. If it worked then I'd save myself 40$ and have a really simple system. I also found that the 880 platform has built in performance inhancements for the gpu so I'm feeling like trying it. We'll see I guess if over time onboard graphics have progress enough... worst comes to worst he'll have to wait a week on a new graphics card.

Thanks for the feedback.
 
Onboard beats those requirements by a mile. Even a crappy Nvidia IGP ought to handle it just fine.
 
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