Oh man people ... have put together my new PC a few days ago and had left the external graphics card out for the moment, to see how the onboard video performs.
Well, the performans of the G35 chipset is by far better than the old i845GL (2003) one.
Before I was able to play Halo in 800 x 600 with 15 - 30 fps.
With the Asus P5E-VM HDMI it let me play in 1280 x 1024 with 10 - 25 fps ... but the graphics quality is superior over the old PC.
Regarding my problem mentioned above ... it has resolved since I put in my eVGA GeForce 8800 GT. Oh my God ! .... I can only say awesome !
The card does get hot, but the performance doesn't let any space for complaints.
Problem solved.
Just one word about another initial problem I had. This motherboard didn't have any sound despite having sound on board. I tried everything but couldn't make it work.
Then I decided to install XP over Vista to see what difference that would make.
But before that I installed SP1 for Vista, and when it was finished with the installation - suddenly I got sound ! ... incredible.
Oh, and regarding Halo - Combat evolved. I think this game is awesome ! Well, I still have to discover Halo 2 / Crysis / Quake Wars / Ghost Reccon 3 / Doom 3 / Unreal Tournament / Flightsimulator X / CoD4 and what else there is hip at the moment.
Something funny what I noticed with Halo ... I was so hooked up playing it online on my old NEC PC from 2003. As I mentioned, it only played "just about" on a lower resolution, but still - I couldn't wait to play it for a few hours almost every day !
Only then, when I installed it on the new PC I noticed what graphics quality was hidden there in this game !!!
Suddenly there was gras all over Blood Gulch ! And another map had lots of fog - that wasn't there before. And the hog's (car's) headlights actually throw a beam onto the floor and walls ... incredible !
Of course with my new graphics card I pulled up the resolution to the max and boy, what a difference ! It's still smooth like anything but the sea in Death Island shows authentic waves moving slowly and the paint layer of tanks looks like real metal now.
The bullets have an impact when they hit any surface = bullets holes everywhere ... SMAHSING !!
When rockets hit anywhere they leave a black / charcoal burn spot = cool.
And another thing ... I never had seen any blood when killing enemies - now you can see red spots next to the dead bodies ... realism has a new meaning now !
The graphics layer of rocks looks more realistic too. Oh and not to forget the ice lakes (have forgotten the name of the map) has a reflection ... oh man, what a difference !
