Onboard graphics any good for htpc or cheap alternative?

MumboJumbo · 26 Jan 2011 at 15:56

hello, well when I upgrade my current pc I'm building a media pc in a lian-li cube and I'm wondering if there are any 775 mobo's that would fit it that have good enough on board graphics for streaming media to a tv screen with good quality. Also hdmi would be handy.

Failing that, what graphics card will do the job?

eddyc · 26 Jan 2011 at 16:05

If you don't need to do 3d gaming then I think almost any modern mobo with on board graphics will do fine. All you need to be able to do is support 1080p content which is far less demanding on graphics than gaming.

If the motherboard has HDMI out then it will almost certainly support 1080p.

MumboJumbo · 26 Jan 2011 at 16:45

I have read elsewhere before about stuttering though while playing the higher qualities, such as blue ray etc.

Blue160 · 26 Jan 2011 at 18:53

If you build without a graphics card, you can always add one at a later date if you have problems. The latest boards come with hardware acceleration for blueray playback so it should work fine.

MumboJumbo · 26 Jan 2011 at 23:38

I'm not going to be around to bodge it as its for my parents so really want it to just work from the get go and leave it.

What card would people use for a htpc then if the mobo wasn#t gona be enough??

Blue160 · 26 Jan 2011 at 23:43

Gt 430 is good. You can get a passive Zotac version which is completely silent as well.

MumboJumbo · 27 Jan 2011 at 16:29

i'll look into it. ty.

AtaRo · 28 Jan 2011 at 12:11

This will do nicely and cheaper too Asus ATI Radeon HD 4350

cmndr_andi · 28 Jan 2011 at 12:17

Hi there, does it need to be a s775 board (assuming you already have the CPU)?

Would it be possible to sell the s775 CPU (and DDR2 RAM if you have that too) and put it towards a newer CPU and DDR3?

I ask because more modern systems have much more powerful onboard graphics.

Pandobear · 29 Jan 2011 at 18:16

I have tried a number of onboard graphics solutions, Nvidia 8200, ATI X1250, ATI HD3000, none of them have been as fluid as a dedicated card of the the same series. I have always thought this to be a product of the slower memory that the graphics have to share. A couple of the newer boards using AMD chipsets have a small amount of dedicated graphics memory that might solve this, but I would just budget for a dedicated card with GDDR3 or above.