GPU for a HTPC

[Deleted]

Hello forum.

I'm thinking about building my own HTPC for my living room. I just a quick question regarding the GPU. I'm mostly going to be streaming/watching TV and
movies on it. Gaming is not really something I plan on doing on it, but I would still love to have the possibilty to play games like WoW and League of Legends.

So here is my question, would the GPU on the i5 be enough or should I invest in a dedicated GPU?

My planned build is something along these lines:

ASUS P8Z77-M PRO
Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 620W PSU
Corsair SSD Force Series 3, 120GB
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9 Kit
Intel® Core i5-2320 Processor
Silverstone SST- GD05B HTPC
Western Digital® Desktop Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s

And then either the integrated GPU on the CPU or something like a AMD 7850.

//Tamari

[vesseblah]

Definitely no separate graphics card. Waste of money and electricity, and forces you to go for a full size case. Ivy Bridges have lot more powerful integrated GPU than the Sandy Bridges, so get one of those instead.

If I was building HTPC today with big enough budget, I'd go for Mini-ITX motherboard, i5-3570K processor, quiet flat CPU heatsink and a Mini-ITX case to match. (links just examples).

[Deleted]

Thanks for the input. I haven't really seen the integrated GPU in action, so that's why I asked.

It's just to bad that you can't buy the Scythe Big Shuriken where I live, but I think Cooler Master got a flat CPU heatsink aswell.

Thanks for you help.

[vesseblah]

Thanks for the input. I haven't really seen the integrated GPU in action, so that's why I asked.

Integrated GPU in Ivy Bridge is about on par with Radeon 5450 and Nvidia GT520 class cards, so it's barely enough for really light gaming, but it has built-in mp4 acceleration which helps with video.

Sadly only Intel processor available atm with the new HD4000 GPU is the expensive i5-3570K model. If you want to go cheaper, totally valid options are AMD Llano processors, dual core or quad core. Those have better integrated GPU than Sandy Bridges and cost whole lot less, but you're more limited with motherboard choices.

If you can find matching motherboard Llano is better for purely HTPC needs. If you need more raw CPU power for anything (like encoding HD videos into smaller space) the i5-3570K makes more sense.