onboard video vs card

Hi, I'm building a computer for a friend who is planning to use it mainly for word processing and web browsing, with some low-key gaming. I had been planning on using the onboard video (nVIDIA GeForce 6100) on the motherboard I'm getting. I'm getting him a gig of RAM so I thought going with the onboard video would be fine for his purposes. Then I talked to him today and he said that he'd like to get "as far ahead of the curve as possible." I think that means he just wants this computer to work well for awhile. So, do you think I should get a video card so that he'll be able to play the games he wants to in a few years? He doesn't play many graphics-heavy games, mostly real-time strategy. Any thoughts would be great.

Onboard sucks for anything close to gaming! Sure you might be able to play Quake 2 at 640x480 but that's it!

Depending on budget of course, the affore mentioned nVidia 6600 is a nice start. Also have a look at the ATI X1300. The next bump in price would land you in the ATI X1600 Pro range.

I'm going to disagree with everybody.

Go onboard, it is absolutely fine for a casual gamer. By the time your friend is interested in playing games in a few years, any card you get today will "SUCK" (just wait a couple years and ask all these guys that say the onboard sucks whether that card is still any good).

To you the onboard is crap. To his friend that only wants basic 2d support and an occasional (not necessarily 3d) game, it is fine.

theboomboomcars is right here. Unless you plan on changing to a cheaper board without the onboard graphics to justify the cost of the video card, I say stick with the onboard. If he uses it and has no problems with it, then there's no need to spend any extra money now. If he uses it and says he wants better graphics, THEN spend the money on a stand alone card.

just to clarify i believe the previous poster meant that a mobo should use PCI-E or express and not PCI-X which is a completely different thing although i cant remember the specifics offhand. the pci-X is used on servers and the like and has no real use on desktops where pci and pci-E are enough.

Oh shut up. A 6100 would run Quake2 at the max.

To be fair, not all Integrated Graphics suck. The aforementioned 6100 performs relatively well, and the top-of-the-line 6150 features 4 pipelines(?), not to mention SM 3.0. There was even a Mobo with an integrated 9600PRO a while back.

OK, not all integrated graphix sux. I recon waiting until after the guy has played some things is actually a pretty good idea.

Nice 3 year bump there.

What about for HTPC use? I have an ASUS M3A78-EM with ATI Radeon HD 3200 onboard graphics. The pc is used for watching video, ripping and encoding video, and nothing else. If I put a PCIE card in there, would that unload some serious work off the CPU? The CPU is an Athlon 64 X2 3.1GHZ (OC'd) processor with 8GB of DDR2 800mhz of ram