How would this work?

  I've seen motherboards with HDMI or DVI video outputs, which seem like
they would work well to hook up to my new HDTV.

But I don't quite understand how that works - I assume that all
traditional video card stuff is all off-loaded to be done by the TV set?  
Is that the way it works? Or what?  Would I still need to buy a video
card?  

--
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
    -- Bertrand Russell

 These motherboards have a Video chip build in which does all the Video
"stuff"
peter

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Ah.  I was hoping that the digital vieo output would be processed by the
TV.  So mboards with HDMI outputs have integrated video, simple as that.

Thanks for clearing that up.

--
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
    -- Bertrand Russell

 EskWIRED@spamblock.panix.com wrote:

This is a board without built-in video (I left off some
details, because the drawing gets too messy.) This
would be a typical, older Intel design.

                                   CPU
                                    |
                               Northbridge --- memory
                                    |
                               Southbridge
                               |        |
                              Disks    PCI_bus

When the board has built-in video, a GPU (graphics processing unit)
is included in the Northbridge logic. So would
look like this. The GPU shares some of the system
memory, to hold the pictures. So if you installed
1GB of memory, maybe 64MB or 128MB would be used
by the GPU. At a minimum, the GPU has a frame buffer,
to hold a pixmap of the screen. The GPU also has logic
to accelerate 2D operations (bitblt, line draw) or
3D operations (DirectX3D or OpenGL function support).

                                   CPU
                                    |
                               Northbridge --- memory
   DVI, HDMI, VGA monitor ---  GPU_included
                                    |
                               Southbridge
                               |        |
                              Disks    PCI_bus

What is missing from the diagram, is the video card
slot. Both kinds of boards support video card upgrades.
You would purchase a video card upgrade, if you were
a gamer. A game like "The SIMS" might work OK on
an integrated GPU, but anything more demanding
needs additional 3D power. On both types of motherboards,
the Northbridge will have a video card (expansion)
slot interface, such as PCI Express (or on older
computers, AGP).

On some motherboards, the integrated GPU is disabled
when a video card is plugged in. On others, they can
both run at the same time. It can be hard to find
documentation that details what will happen on a
particular motherboard.

When you want to play certain kinds of movies, some
GPUs (either in the Northbridge, or on a video card),
also have a movie acceleration function. This can work
to (partially) reduce the load on the CPU. Such a
feature is popular for making home theatre personal
computers (HTPC). Some playback benchmarks are shown here.
The "HD 3300" and the "Geforce 8300" are both integrated
GPUs, and are part of the Northbridge on their motherboards.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/media-playback_7.html

So 3D gaming is the main reason to want something better
than an integrated GPU. Either that, or the need to connect
more monitors to the computer.

HTH,
      Paul

 
Yeah - that helps considerably.

I got mixed up - I was thinking that because SPDIF outputs offload the
audio decoding to my stereo receiver, the HDMI oupuut offloaded the video
"work" to the TV.  I understand now.

--
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
    -- Bertrand Russell