I have a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 motherboard with an onboard Intel 82865G graphics chip (circa 2005). Is this going to be faster than a 128MB AGP card based on the nVidia FX 5200 chip (circa 2003)? If you have any pointers to a review, that would also be appreciated. Thanks.

I am pretty sure it will be. The onboard cards are nearly always a good bit weaker than most any external. My question is, why can't you get something higher?

Thanks for your comments. I just thought that the Intel 82865G graphics might be better than the FX 5200's because the Intel chip is a newer one by about two years. It seems to be performing reasonably well, supporting 1600x1200 in 24-bit color and an 85 Hz monitor refresh rate.

We're wanting to make use of the FX 5200 card as it's from an existing system that's being upgraded from a 2.0 GHz Celeron with 768 MB RAM and 40 GB disk, to a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB RAM and 120 GB disk. All the parts are already around, and their current Celeron system meets their needs, except that it's a bit prone to application crashes. I'm hoping that the new system will be a bit more stable.

If the FX 5200 is better than the 82865G, then it's worth my time to move it across and load the latest nVidia drivers. Using the FX 5200 also has the added benefit of freeing up an extra 128 MB of RAM for applications.

its always better to have a card then onboard.

Yes, the onboard sounds really good, but as you just said, it takes up your systems resources and usually doesn't perform as good as a card.

Yes, it should be worth the time. Then again, if it doesn't work as good, then you could just switch back.

if you're talking about the integrated intel extreme graphics built on 82865G,
then i would say i'll go for FX5200 anytime. im not sure about the speed, but what i know is the gaming capabilities of FX5200 is higher than IEG2. well if u can get something higher, always better...i hate using integrated graphics chip...