GeForce vs Intel On Board

Which of these would preform better overall
and in games, Just curious.
I'll be using mostly for HTPC but might game just a bit.

GeForce 7150 On Board
vs
Intel GMA x3500 on Board

The two boards I'm looking at are the:
EVGa GeForce Board
and
Asus Intel Board

My gut feeling would tell me that the Nvidia one is better, but I don't
Know anything about the new Intels, and apparently it DX10 too.

Thanks,
D

neither card is meant for gaming.... as in you will get a slideshow if you try to do anything related to gaming, appart maybe super old games like starcraft 1

g35http://www.hardspell.com/english/do...sp?news_id=1862

Nvidiahttp://service.futuremark.com/searc...tingsystem=-100

The intel chipset is slightly better here.

basically you are better off buying the cheapest board and getting a cheap video card, say a HD 3650 and that would beat both cards in both multimedia as well as gaming. The ati hd cards support audio over hdmi on the cards, as well as decoding of video and are cheap.

What Motherboard and graphics card combination would you recommend?
I intend on putting a Core 2 Duo in it.
I usually prefer Nvidia, But Will try ati if they make a better HTPC.

for a htpc, noise is usually always an issue. with that in mind, i'd recomend anything silent from ati. the HD 2400pro and HD 3450 Pro have passive coolers and thus will generate no noise. Both support audio over HDMI as well as h.264 acceleration. Bear in mind that these cards are not meant for gaming at all, but they will outperform any onboard solution.

as for motherboard, htpc usually implies mini atx motherboard. some people do fit full atx motherboards and do buy bigger case, but it really depends on where you want to put the htpc. For motherboard, i'd recomend those with intel chipsets as i dont like nvidia too much. they have let me down on too many occasions, the last one being a lack of support for a product less than three years old (they did nto support vista on it). Other people have complained that their boards give them trouble on drivers and such.

Personally i'd probably go for the cheapest board that still has everything i'd want. Things to look out for is how many memory slots and how many sata ports and if you want firewires and stuff like that.

With that in mind, the intel board you linked me is actually one of my favorites if i were to build a HTPC system today.

If I wanted to go with the Asus motherboard I linked.
It would probably outperform the EVGA one, and
I could in the future add a better graphics solution anyway.

That sounds like a good plan to me.

I am looking at a very small mATX case.
I plan on gettin 1-2g of ram, and a C2D
with a 160gb WD, and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive.
I didn't really want to stick in dedicated graphics
right away just to see how it would preform. But as usual
I want the best of the situation I'm in.

Would the video cards you recommended run on the power supply
included with the system above?

I have a copy of both XP and Vista Business?
Between those two which would be better for HTPC
and just computing in general.

D

i'd say go for atleast 2 gigs of ram. only consider 4 gigs of ram or more if you want to get a 64 bit edition of vista - which you dont. 1 gig of ram is very little today and will not alow you to run vista very well.

as a case, i'd say it looks sort of ugly.

the power supply is generic. if it were a good power supply company, it would be largely sufficient, but i have difficulty trusting generic power supplied, ive had too many bad experiences with them and just looking at my store's computer recycling bin, it is usually full of generic power supplies in service for less than three years....

Well Should I use Xp Or Vista?

If I use Xp I don't think I really need 2 gigs
I have a laptop with Xp Pro on it with only 1 gig
and It runs just fine.
This desktop will be used as a desktop as well as a media PC
I was just thinking that Vista has more eye candy and might
show off better than Xp. But It would require 2 gb at least to
be a functional computer.
I just pointed out that I only have a copy of Vista Busi
and not Home premium or ultimate. As far as I know it
is lacking in the Home media section, Xp Pro would probably
be the better operating system to go with.

i'd still go with 2 gigs of ram simply because 2 gigs of ram is simply the standard and is cheap. heck, my next build will have 4 or 8 gigs of ram. i can purchase 2 gigs of ram for 30$, no point in getting only one gig of ram. 4 gigs of ram goes for 80$ for me. i currently have a system with xp and more ram always helps. since you will use it as a media pc as well as desktop, the more ram, the better. it is highly probably that you will use the dual core aspect of your system and load more programs. plus, newer programs consume more ressources anyways. and getting one gig of ram sort of locks you out of vista business.

personally i'd go with vista rather than xp. the way vista treats the video is better imo, even though more of a ressource hog. the networking is also significantly better and media sharing is much easier. XP pro doesnt have the multimedia component either just so you know. i personally would be on vista right now if it werent for nvidia letting down their customers and not providing GART drivers for NF3 based motherboards....