Strange silkscreen notation near RAM Internal & External Graphics

[DaveLembke]

Friend of mine lost his motherboard and was looking for a cheap replacement. Looking at newegg I found this board that I am not going to suggest to him because its only DDR and only 1.5 SATA, surprisingly very out of date board, but looking around on the board this caught my eye near the RAM slots.

For External Graphics
For Internal Graphics

With the board linked here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157338

Question I have is... when it comes to Integrated GPU or added Video cards that share with system RAM, ... can the shared memory actually be specific to only certain memory slots shared for Internal (integrated ) GPU and External ( added on video card ) GPUs?

I thought that when it came to shared memory for the GPU no matter if integrated or add on video card that it shared from total RAM, and so it could share disproportionally between 2 slots with random memory addresses for whatever is in use and the memory controller was responsible for setting an allocation for the GPU and keeping the juggle as far as what memory is graphics data and what is regular data all randomly scattered in the RAM as next available RAM addresses become available to store new temporary data until the address is flagged free to reuse with a new 0 or 1.

I included a pic as well with a green box around the strange silk screen on the motherboard.

I think I am going to point my friend to ebay as for for a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo and needing a board that supports DDR2-667Mhz the other options at newegg are in a price range that if he is spending beyond $50, such as a Gigabyte brand socket 775 board for $75, he might as well just go with a newer build for like $150 in parts ( $60 Motherboard, $60 CPU, $30 RAM ) and reuse all other parts from current build in a newer more powerful configuration rather than sink 50% of a new build cost into an otherwise not so powerful Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8Ghz.


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[BC_Programmer]

I don't know for sure but it may be intended to line up with the model number that is silk screens on the other end of the RAM slots. In this case it lines up with the "for external graphics" line, but I imagine other models which have an internal AGP video adapter and no AGP slot might have a similar model number that is silk-screened to be on the same "line" as the "for internal graphics".

It also might be related to FSB ratings related to the RAM since AGP as I understand worked as a multiplier of the system FSB clock speed.

[camerongray]

Found this in the instruction manual, not sure why it is printed on the board though:

[Calum]

Found this in the instruction manual, not sure why it is printed on the board though:

Because Asrock.

Dave, you could also look into solutions like the Gigabyte Brix and similar machines - tiny, power efficient PCs using Atom equivalent CPUs which would provide adequate performance (along with 4GB of RAM and an SSD) for the average user.  I don't know about the US but over here they're about £80, plus say £25 for RAM and then a small SSD makes them an attractive alternative to rebuilding older machines if there's no huge performance requirement.  That may well not be appropriate in this case but thought I'd suggest it as something to consider.

I think you'll struggle to find new 775 boards for anything like reasonable prices, even used ones cost a lot more than they're worth these days as some people just want to extend the life of their higher-end 775 based systems and some want to keep old systems like the one you mentioned running, all adds up to a fair bit of demand for end-of-life products - similar to X58 motherboard prices being sky-high whereas CPUs are dirt cheap.