Onboard Video

I want to upgrade to a new system but I'd rather not spend too much on one right now. I was thinking about getting a micro-atx board that has an onboard video. I won't be playing any games so the performance isn't a big deal to me. All I want it to do is be able to run dual CRT monitors. I need one VGA and the other can be a DVI as long as I can use an adapter.

My question is: Would I be better of spending $75 on a video card or buying a micro-atx board with the onboard video? Will the overclocking be affected by the video on the board or will I get better performance with a PCI express card?

Any board recomendations?

While the selection of boards is a bit more limited when you want to go with onboard video, I don't think onboard video limits overclocks much though, it's just a question as to whether the board has all the features you want. But if you want to know of specific onboard video boards that work, I've had more success with my board than I could have ever hoped for... it's happy up to about 324-328 FSB so far and I can't say enough good things about the board and it's layout.

Gigabyte GA-M61P-S3

Biostar has two pretty good overclocking mATX integrated video boards:

TA690G
TF7050

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=144615
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=142321

Seem to be very nice overclockers and you can do DVI+VGA with the HDMI to DVI adapter

Also an external video card is only like $30 if all you want is dual monitors.

i would say get the TF7050.

The only thing I don't like about the 7025 and 7050 are that they only have 1 ATA. I am running 2 ATA hd's and 2 ATA DVDRW's now. So what video cards would be ok to use if I went with another board instead of something with onboard vga? I am upgrading from a 9800 pro and I have no idea what is better than that now.

Well if you just want dual monitors and basic DX9 3D performance for Vista, then you can get a Geforce 5200/6200 for like 30 bucks off Newegg.

If you actually want something that performs better than your current card then yes you would need to pay $75 or more for a 6600GT/7600gs/7600gt/X1600 series Pro/XT or better.

Yeah, def don't want to go down in performance. I just can't decide what I want to do for a system. Too many choices now. What I'd really prefer to do is get the $99 combo special at Fry's and be done with it. Problem is those boards don't seem to be any good. I don't want to upgrade all of this stuff now and have it be dated again in a year.

Ok, all onboard video is going to suck a lot more than your 9800Pro.

Here is a good cheap upgrade path:
Biostar TForce6100 (cheap/has 2 ATA ports/quite ocable) or DFI Infinity MII
Athlon X2 3600+ Brisbane
2GB of DDR2 6400 (~$80)
Geforce 8600GT ($110)

All of that is about $350, not bad for the performance you will get.

Honestly for anything you want to do this should be a great system for a while. It won't be up to date in a year (heck it really isn't up to date now), but why does it matter if it does everything you want to do fast.

All I want it to do is burn DVD's...nothing is wrong with my current system. I just want a new computer, I really don't need one.

If you're set on running ATA hard drives you can use a converter to go from ATA to SATA.