Do graphics cards matter for day to day use (and some programming)?

[Izi]

As title, if the machine is going to be used in an office environment with fairly demanding programs (Visual Studio 2010 / SQL Server), does the graphics card matter?

 

[Purgatory]

Intergrated should be fine or any low spec dedicated card will do.

 

[InfiniteNoise]

Not really.

Integrated graphics or a low end dedicated graphic card are more than enough for these tasks.

 

[porkmince]

as above no need for dedicated graphics if you have integrated on CPU

 

[xsistor]

if you're doing something like silverlight/WPF or windows phone development with VS Studio then a graphics card can be useful. Especially if you're using emulators to do development. If you're developing in DirectX or XNA then obviously you need a graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0c or higher (depending on which DX version you're targeting.
If it's just web-apps then you're likely to be fine with any old integrated graphics.

 

[Izi]

Thanks ya'all

 

[jkkc313]

i think for most instances the intel hd integrated should do the trick but you may game so... a discrete will not do u any harm

 

[Borsch]

Dedicated card can actually be slower for particular tasks than an integrated sandy bridge one- for programs that use QuickSync.