onboard graphics

[freddie]

thinking of motherboards, i guess soon there will be a few new chipsets intel g35 and amd 780g (not sure if code is right).

anyway, for intel cpu, 45nm compatible, ddr2, quad compatible.

question is which might be better for onbaord graphics and future upgrade cpu wise? onboard because compared to a card it's much more energy efficient, i'm not a gamer so it doesnt really matter, though I still want the best onboard graphics in case i want to play a 2year old game!

when will the reviews and the boards come out? anyone know?

i was thinking of getting a putting together a decent base unit with an overclocked e2160 chip, then maybe next year upgrade the processor for a efficient quad (i'm hoping a new stepping might have brought energy use down quite a bit by then). so basically just a system that doesn't need to change much at all.

thanks

[aidanjt]

Intel's onboard graphics are well weathered and proven in production, a very good choice if gaming isn't a concern.

As for the E2xxx series chips, don't be expecting to pull any major overclocks out of them, they're bottom of the speed bin barrel so to speak. But the Q6600 G0 stepping is already fairly efficent with a TDP of just 95W, that's ~24W per core. Any current boards will be good enough for Wolfdale and Yorkfield, but I don't see the TDP going down as Intel will want to exploit the 45nm process to gain higher frequencies, pack more transistors, and gain (yet) more performance. But any board wont be able to run a Nehalem because of the system architecture changes.