I5-750 on a H55 board

[Guest]

Ok, i am building a computer for a friend, and have settled on the Asus P7H55-M-Pro board with the Core i5-750.

I was very happy with this combo, but now i hear something about the graphics ports (HDMI, DVI and VGA) ports on the motherboard link up to the integrated graphics in the processor...of which the i5-750 has none. What i want to know is does this motherboard have an onboard graphics card? or do the outputs rely on having a clarkdale processor? if this is the case i am going to need a dedicated graphics card, and most likely may as well change to a P55 chipset...

Can anybody clear this confusion up for me? and if those outputs ARE useless with an i5-750, is it worth swapping to a P55 board, and which one?

 

[Lmeow]

The motherboard itself does not have any graphics chip, and you are right, the graphic ouput relies on having a CPU with a graphics chip - all Clarkdales have one, and yes, you would need a dedicated graphics card. Those ports are useless with an i5 750. As for getting a P55 board - I guess, you'd only need a dedicated graphics card for the video output, and you can get a real cheap one it doesn't matter if you're just using it for the video output. Something like a Radeon HD 4350 would do, and most are only around $20-$30. You can actually game on it though on low to medium settings, and it performs a bit higher than the 9400GT.

I'm just wondering though, what would your friend need an i5 750 for, if he's not going to game or do anything that requires a dedicated graphics card? If it's mainly to watch 1080p movies, surf the net, play few flash games - then an i3 530 would be more than sufficient, and you wouldn't have to buy a separate graphics card.

If you still want to buy an i5 750, then get a cheap P55 motherboard like the MSI P55-CD53, and an HD 4350.