MSI AM2 nForce 410 MATX

[Gibby]

I'm building a PC for a mate, on a fairly tight budget. His only requirement at the moment is that it can play C&C Generals, and be upgraded later.

I am thinking of starting with an MSI AM2 nForce 410 MATX motherboard, as it is cheap and has AM2, PCI Express x16 and SATA.

Does anyone know if the onboard NVIDIA GeForce 6100 will run C&C Generals and what is the max memory it can share?

[saphalline]

The 6100 will technically run C&C Generals, but not very well. It's only onboard video, after all. I think the max shared RAM for it is 128MB, but it could be 192MB for the 6150/LE chipset. I'm not certain on that.

The onboard video chipsets are indeed cheap, but they cut a few too many corners to be considered ideal for a gaming system. I understand that price is a concern, but just be careful about the mobo you pick out. Don't skimp too much!

[Gibby]

Thanks for that.
I installed it last night along with an Athlon 64 3500 and 512MB PC2 4300 (128MB GFX), and it runs Generals pretty well (1024 * 768 low\medium detail).

I wouldn't normally choose onboard GFX, but in this case it did the job and there's a PCI Express 16 slot available for when a real card is needed.