Old GPU worth bothering with?

Hardware GPU
1

I'm doing the usual swap around of machines and parts and thought I'd throw together a htpc.



It's an ASRock H77M LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...



A Intel Pentium G2120 Ivy Bridge Dual-Core 3.1GHz LGA 1155 Desktop Processor BX80637G2120:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...



A Hauppauge TV tuner, xonar sound-card, plenty of 1600mhz ddr3, ssd, raid storage, etc.


1 question, I have an old 8800 gtx in the attic. Is it worth throwing in at all or just go with the on-board graphics until I pick up a new card. Can it use or contribute to h.264? The onboard chip on this pentium doesn't seem to perform very well...

2

Your old 8800 PROBABLY would bottleneck the system, and they had nothing in them to decode/encode h.264.  So, I would probably just go with the onboard until you can find something better.

 

3

The now venerable 8800 was re-branded by nVidia a few times I think it ended up being the 240 or something. It will mess up the power efficiency. You might want to just stick with the onboard graphics till you can fit a more suitable card.

4

Yeah, I used to heat my apartment with it.

5

I wouldn't bother with the old 8800. A fanless gtx610 can be found for around $30-$40 and makes a great htpc vid card.