Will Integrated Intel HD Graphics be enough for...

kuro89

My friend wants to buy an HTPC. I asked around the forum for advice but in the end people were arguing with one another. What one person said was enough others disagreed. In the end I came up with something but after adding up the prices of all the parts it turns out to be around $500. I saw on another site an already built desktop is also around $500 so I was thinking of just buying that.

That desktop has i3 2120, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and Integrated Intel HD Graphics (I'm guessing onboard?)

He will be using the HTPC strictly for HD video playback on his 47+ TV.

Long story short: Will Integrated Intel HD Graphics be enough for smooth HD playback on his 47+ TV?

Mufflore · 08-02-2012, 20:17 | posts: 9,532 | Location: UK

Yes.
With or without the onboard HD2000, it will be fine.

N0sferatU · 08-03-2012, 16:04 | posts: 1,414 | Location: United States

yes I use one (Core i3 with integrated HD graphics 1st generation) for my bedroom HTPC (secondary HTPC). Plays back 1080p fine w/o a problem. 1080p MKV and using that frame interpolation plugin that's a few threads down and it does that fine too with them.

Pill Monster · 08-03-2012, 16:42 | posts: 20,464 | Location: NZ

Yeah but an AMD APU would be better, however the drawback with APU is they're socket FM1 so not really upgradable....

givmedew · 08-18-2012, 10:44 | posts: 25 | Location: CHICAGO

I don't know if you already made this purchase or not but there is some proprietary post processing done by the 2nd gen intel embedded graphics that really make lower quality sources shine in comparison to AMD GPUs. This is completely lost on high quality sources but with you tube videos or SD content it is a huge and noticeable difference. I would say it is much more noticeable than anything madVR can do.

As far as if the proc can handle h.264 @ 1080p I have no clue I would expect it could but not sure. Going off of this thread http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1547441 A core 2 duo is enough to handle 1080p 264 content.

bigpipe · 09-18-2012, 04:16 | posts: 3,674 | Location: Atlanta

I'm using a laptop with a I3 2370m with the on die intel graphics HD3000. The desktop i3 is hd 2000. It runs HD, Blue ray perfect at very low cpu usage. It is also extremly fast when you want to encode video/change formats. I was going to build a box for HTPC but at $350 for the laptop it just made more since to go with the laptop plus it's really portable and very quite.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1506/16/