Best Motherboard for Multiple Screen Home Theater PC Setup

I’ve mentioned the motherboards with onboard video before as a great option for a home theater PC setup and I think the ASUS A8N-VM CSM motherboard with onboard Nvidia GeForce 6150 video is the way to go. With the onboard Nvidia 6150 chipset you can watch 1080p high definition video. It has dual video output with a DVI and VGA; so you could connect up your high def display and a monitor at the same time. I think this is the best feature of this motherboard. It does only support Socket 939 AMD cpu’s and doesn’t have a lot of extra PCI slots but overall it’s a pretty nice motherboard. Here’s my quick list of ‘nice to have features’:

• Onboard 128mb video with Nvidia GeForce chipset
• DVI output capable of up to 1080p output
• Additional VGA output for multiple screen hookup
• PCI Express slot for future graphic card upgrades
• Two PCI slots for tuners/additional cards
• Up to 4 SATA II devices with built in Raid 0/1 support
• HD Audio
• USB and Firewire
• MicroATX form factor

Some people might have issues with the onboard video but if you are not a serious gamer then I think an onboard video option like the ASUS motherboard makes for a perfect home theater PC. For my setup, I could envision using the DVI connection to drive high def content to my Dell 21’ widescreen LCD monitor and then the VGA connection to drive my 800x600 projector; I get the best of both worlds with one setup.

What do you think – is onboard video the way to go?