Motherboard on board video...Yay or Nay?

[Peelback79]

Hi all. Building a computer for my non-gaming cousin. Trying to keep the price down. Since he doesn't game, I'm looking for a mobo with decent on-board video that also supports Intel's 45nm LGA 775. Any no-brainer recommendations for a good mobo with on-board that would support an E84 or E8600 oc'd? Or should I just stick with my oringinal gut instinct and get a P35 series mobo and pick up a cheap 100 dollar graphics card?

Thanks all.

 

[Werelds]

I'll just give you an indication from personal experience, but I'm not really an expert on motherboards; whenever I need one, I always look through some guides and reviews to make my choice.

About a year ago, I've built an HTPC, and I was also doubting whether to stick with the onboard card or not. In the end, I sticked with the onboard one, and to this date, that has worked beautifully.

The board I got then was for the AMD platform: K9A2GM-FIH
It can handle any video playback (yes, that includes HD and x264; although I must admit I haven't tried Bluray because..well, we don't care about Bluray ;$), and I've left Aero enabled and don't experience any slowdowns because of that. It also runs Mediaportal just fine, so I'm very happy with my choice.

Now, I'm not entirely sure what the good chipsets would be for an Intel platform (the above is an AMD 780 chipset, which has an ATi Xpress 1250 onboard), but my guess is that something like P6NGM-FIH would do the trick as well.

Small sidenote: obviously, because I was building an HTPC, HDMI was a priority for me, so that's also what I'm using as output. The board mentioned above is just an example, I have no idea how good the graphics controller on the board really is, but that one has both HDMI and D-Sub ports, so that's the kind of thing you're looking for I guess.

 

[DSF]

What is your cousin doing? It's rare for people who aren't gaming to need the straight speed of an overclocked E8400. If it's a serious number-crunching box he might be better off with a quad core. Either way the E8600 is a waste of money. Don't buy it.

The 780G is a good option, but for someone just doing basic 2D text work any onboard chipset is really going to be fine these days. I mention that because if you want to stay Intel then 780G isn't possible.

If you do go with a discrete graphics card, $100 is way more than you need to spend for a non-gamer. Really $50 or less is all you need.

 

[Peelback79]

Thanks for the help werelds. Going with the GA-73PVM-S2H. It was recommended over the MSI board because it has dual channel memory support for the same price.

 

[Werelds]

Glad to have been of assistance.

Let me know how that board works out, as a relative has also just asked me to put together a simple system for him; something cool and quiet.

 

[nerp]

Build something similar to the #2 system in my sig. It cost me so little to build, I was shocked. It's perfect for a standard non-gaming system. No need to overclock. It flies. It can even play HL2 and CS:S with great framerates, if he's so inclined.

With cool'n'quiet enabled it uses very little power. Really a sweet build that anyone who doesn't game seriously would be very happy with.

 

[Raduque]

If there's no gaming or HD playback required, then any old Intel onboard will do. The 3100 or X3000 onboards will even do Aero nicely.

 

[zogg]

use a gigabyte or asus board with onboard video
you can use up to half of the installed ddr2 ram
I built 2 identical systems with onboard video and they rock
gigabyte board 4 gigs ram 2 gigs assighned to video chip
it rocks and plays almost any game you throw at it
Crysis runs a little choppy but it runs
other older games run perfect with great video and 8 channel souind chip is unbelieveably great sounding...better then my creative audigy 3


zogg

 

[zogg]

isnt it amazing that we dont have fiddle around with drivers and everything is on baord
video,network, and sound

how easy is that...when I built my computers I had to install sound cards, video cards and network cards....then I would get conflicts with hardware and drivers
now a child can build a computer and install the OS with out any trouble at all



zogg

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: zogg
isnt it amazing that we dont have fiddle around with drivers and everything is on baord
video,network, and sound

how easy is that...when I built my computers I had to install sound cards, video cards and network cards....then I would get conflicts with hardware and drivers
now a child can build a computer and install the OS with out any trouble at all



zogg

I remember setting manual dip switches to assign specific IRQs for my devices as well as the COM ports. Then I remember having to specifically tell each application what specific IRQs and COM ports each device used. All had to by in perfect order otherwise nothing would work at all. Plug and play was a dream.

Let's also not forget the config.sys and autoexec.bat entries needed to get all your devices working. You'd have the mouse working in windows but it wouldn't work in any game. Ooops.

Stuff is so painfully easy now, even with the hardware being so much more complicated.

 

[Werelds]

Oh the good old days.

Manually setting the jumpers and dip switches on NICs and Soundcards to make sure they didn't overlap their IRQ and DMA addresses, setting up the network protocols and services manually <3

XP already made stuff easy, but Vista is absolutely brilliant. Driver support for almost everything, if it's not in the default distribution, it'll find it on Windows Update. Networking with old and "gimped" versions (like XP Home) works fine, and it even allows you to share pretty much any device on the network; even printers that aren't supposed to be shareable (like our Officejet K80, according to HP it would never be shareable on the network without a printer server).
Still some people don't like Vista; why, I don't get - compared to any previous Windows version, it's more stable, works better with the old Windows versions, and it's brilliant for people who don't know much about computers; not easy for them to screw their system up.


I'll tell you one thing though. I'd gladly go back to when I bought my first Voodoo. Priceless to see my P1 133/24MB Ram/ATi Mach64+Voodoo1 (for a total of a whopping 6 megs video memory) outperform the latest systems in OpenGL games (or games like HL1, where you could use Glide).


Anyways, back to the topic, how's that board working out Peelback79?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I had always shied away from integrated video, for the same reason I avoided "all-in-one" printer-fax-scanner boxes.

But I was faced with the same situation as yours: a mother and brother who needed upgrades from aging 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4 Northwood 400-FSB systems -- circa 2002. And "AGP video need not apply."

I found this:

Gigabyte GA-73VM-S2 mATX $60

The video seems just fine for mo' and bro's computing needs, and there's still a PCI_E x16 slot for a "better" graphics add-in.

At worst, one of the boards had an x1 slot that didn't seem to allow a gigabit-ethernet card to work, and the onboard LAN is onlyy 10/100. But PCI gigabit cards are cheaper than cigarettes, and a gigabit PCI-E card is probably available for two packs of KOOLs.

EDIT: One more: We picked up an E2140 and E2180 CPU for these, and at about the same price as the board itself. For those processors -- both dual-cores -- you can over-clock them to between 50 and 66% above stock speed without even changing the VCORE voltage from its "Auto" setting. I thought it was pretty stunning, really. The BIOS setup limits you to the board's choice of DIMM voltage, but you can set the timings and the essential features for a good OC on some cheap processors. Further, the specs seem to indicate these are compatible through Wolfdale and Yorkfield.

 

[zogg]

try the amd dual core motherboards fro gigabyte...cheaper processor and overclock like crazy

 

[zogg]

since amd and ati merged the ob video is great too

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: DSF
What is your cousin doing? It's rare for people who aren't gaming to need the straight speed of an overclocked E8400. If it's a serious number-crunching box he might be better off with a quad core. Either way the E8600 is a waste of money. Don't buy it.

The 780G is a good option, but for someone just doing basic 2D text work any onboard chipset is really going to be fine these days. I mention that because if you want to stay Intel then 780G isn't possible.

If you do go with a discrete graphics card, $100 is way more than you need to spend for a non-gamer. Really $50 or less is all you need.

i am with him...

A Q6600 sounds like a more sensible purchase for his needs.
Or maybe a 780G + 50$ 45watt AMD X2.

They sell low end, passively cooled video card like the AMD HD3450 and some nvidia equivalent for 20$ new.
I bought one to convert an old gaming box into a file server. For a non gamer, you don't need more then that.

 

[Modelworks]

You don't even have to spend $100 on a card.
Almost any card will be better than the on board.
Pick up a cheap $20 one.

 

[extra]

Should see if you can still get in on the $99 ecs board (which has an onboard low end older geforce chip) + e7200 ....

 

[taltamir]

never, ever, buy an ECS board.