I seem to be hearing frequently that today's onboard video is not the garbage it was just a couple years ago. Has it gotten that good? Can it rival mid-range PCI-E video cards?

Nope, it's still garbage for any sort of gaming whatsoever. It is better than older stuff, in that it can actually run Vista Aero and such, but that's not saying much. Even a low-end budget card will outpace them.

The onboard video in the SE labs here can play Quake 3 with everything maxed out.

I'm betting that's the limit of their capabilities.

My brother told me that he's running Hellgate: London on his onboard...it's only a 6150, IIRC, so I imagine it's quite a slideshow.

It still blows

It's all relative, but if you intend to do any sort of modern gaming- onboard still is crap. Currently the best onboard video available is either the Geforce 8400 or AMD's HD3200. Most solutions still steal from your available ram instead of featuring dedicated video ram.

I've always kind of been of the mindset that fully built PC's with onboard video/sound etc, were more for the "average" consumer who doesnt know squat about PC's, in order to make things easier for the company and user.

Wouldn't really worry about them honestly, as long as minimum performance is cheaper to make, companies like Dell and Gateway will keep spitting them out to satisfy the average joe computer user.

From what I've heard, onboard produces less heat in a laptop. But that could be a myth.

Pretty bad, unless you're playing 4+ year old games.

Took me forever to get that secret area when I first started playing JK as a kid. I never thought that the slope you walk up would actually have traction to walk up.

But then again I didn't have experience with JK physics xD

i miss secrets like in doom or JK in modern games.

and easter eggs. like all those bits with sam the bunny (from sam and max)

I remember when Q3 was the most used graphical benchmark...