Thread: Is graphics card essential

I am planning to purchase a desktop PC with the main purpose of managing my collection of photographs, processing them as well as for creating my website and photoblog etc. I am not a gamer - in fact never play games. Do I still need a graphics card?

Onboard video cards should be fine for ur needs.

rajan is right.

Yes, you do need a graphic card ! Windows vista and now Win 7 don't work well without a graphic card, so on-board graphics is hardly sufficient.

its not needed but u can go for one for added advantage and better performance.

Go for onboard graphics...it'll be 128mb or something.Whenever u feel thats not sufficient buy a new one and disable onboard graphics....

PS.Almost all brands now giving 128mb onbord graphics in their medium range mobos...

Graphics card is necessary now a days//// everyone prefers to buy one and it costs about 2000/- [Nvidia 512 MB].......so it's not too costly.....so just go for it ,it's worth buying it...

for your needs onboard is good enough

if you are doing serious processing of photos using professional softwares like photoshop & such then a graphics card will surely make the work faster.in my opinion though a graphics card is a must unless your motherboard already has nVidia 9300 chipset(or something like that) because you will see a noticeable improvement in all areas(including multimedia,OS graphics etc).also lose this misconception that graphics cards are for gamers only.Rs.2500 graphics card is more than enough for a normal user like you but not of any value to a gamer.gamers cards starts from at least Rs.6000 to play popular games at decent/medium settings on a 20"LCD.Rs.2500 cards are exclusively meant for users like you.

onboard graphics eats up ur system RAM, thus making it slow adding graphic card is like adding turbocharger to an naturally aspirated engine.

u can always reduce that option in the BIOS, its usually in steps of 32MB,64MB128MB,256MB and so on, so if ur low on RAM,u can always reduce it.

Originally Posted by dhatul

I am planning to purchase a desktop PC with the main purpose of managing my collection of photographs, processing them as well as for creating my website and photoblog etc. I am not a gamer - in fact never play games. Do I still need a graphics card?

No, as per your usage mentioned you dont need a graphics card. Graphics card is mainly used for the gaming purpose and for some 3D applications which need a lot of ram to work on.

You dont need graphics card.

Thanks a lot to all you guys for valuable inputs, though I must confess that I am as confused as I was at the beginning of this thread. Anyway, since Rs. 2500/- is something I can easily spare I have decided that adding a basic graphics card would do no harm. Thanks once again.

for your current needs onboard is good enough....
Afterall you can purchase a Graphics card whenever you need it.....

a good decision & trust me you will be glad.

Originally Posted by Just4kick

for your current needs onboard is good enough....
Afterall you can purchase a Graphics card whenever you need it.....

it depends on whihc OS will he be using and the monitor also and also the software which he will be using if he is using something like photshop elements 7 he will need a GPU
and @ OP
please post your motherboard model and other config so it will be easier for us to help and since you have 2500 to spare why not go with dedicated GPU rather than shared onboard GPU and how much RAM do you have ?