Which 775 board w.o/b graphics HDMI ?

I havent bought a motherboard for quite some time so need some advice. I am after:


C2D 775 form
HDMI output
onboard graphics to play counterstrike and games of that age etc
DDR2
Micro ATX
around £50 - £60



thanks for any help

:)

Unless you're willing to hunt extensively for an nvidia-based board, the best you're likely to get is G41, like this Gigabyte, but the graphical performance is going to be pretty mediocre. In many respects you'd be much better off with a cheap G31 motherboard and a dirt cheap discrete card like an 8400GS or HD4350...

Of course, if I could persuade you to mITX ebuyer have a funky Zotac G41 mITX board... ;)

EDIT: scrap the wildcard, no HDMI! Sorry :(

EDIT2: second wildcard, both the board *and* the store! Biostar with geforce 7150 *and* HDMI

Jim's bob on the money with his mITX suggestion, but for better integrated graphics you need to spend a bit more and get the Nvidia Ion set which cost me almost double the price that Jim links to. I'm not aware of any mATX boards with integrated graphics NEW at the price point quoted, certainly not that are recommended. Neither Scan nor Aria have anything listed.

If you want half decent integrated graphics you need the Nvidia one as the Intel ones are only really any good as basic office machines IMHO.

Either that or have a look at the ATI ones, but of course, they're not C2D....

Actually, if you're sensible with the settings a G41 board should handle games of the age / requirements of Counterstrike without too much difficulty: I believe it's of similar age & spec to Warcraft III and Neverwinter Nights, both of which I've played on 965 Express graphics (i.e. GMA3100) - and GMA4500 was meant to be a big improvement over GMA3100. Of course it's an FPS which means higher framerates are preferable if possible. Is there any specific reason why you want onboard rather than a cheap discrete card? I'll repeat (this time with links to examples!): You'd get much better performance from your £60 budget by going for a reasonable G41 motherboard (£35, 4 DIMMs!) and an 8400GS (£23) or HD4350 (£27)

thanks for the replies. I definetly want to go onboard or passive. as i want this box as a downloader and a DOD game playing facility. so cant stand the fan whirrrrr as I sleep.

I just happen to have a c2d, 4gb ddr2 ram, hd, dvdrw going spair so just need the board and case to complete really.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 5cupa

I definetly want to go onboard or passive.

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Well, the HD4350 I linked to above is passive, and ASUS do a passive 8400GS 512MB for £24 (no HDMI on that apparently, but you can get DVI - HDMI dongles easily enough!). That'll definitely give you the best all-round performance, although as I said I reckon the graphics on a G41 motherboard might do you if you're careful with the game settings.

You could always get a G41 with HDMI (e.g. the gigabyte I linked to in my first post) then add a passive low end card if you find that the on-board isn't up to the task... only problem with that is that G41 boards with HDMI demand ~ a £15 premium, by the looks of it :(