Yeah, the only real reason I'd have anything with onboard video is the case that a video card fails. Had that happen right in the middle of finals week last term, right in the middle of writing an essay. Plus, I had upgraded to a totally new system and had no spares. I was just lucky my brother had a spare of his own.

There is almost no reason NOT to have onboard video.  And in general, you don't care about the drivers for it, as if your main board goes south (like mine did a month ago) just take it out, boot up and Windows will load and use a generic VGA driver which should work with any onboard video.

A lot of the responses are about running the system with the onboard as the primary solution.  The guy is simply asking if it would cause some sort of conflict, and his desire for redundancy in video solutions isn't a bad thing if it is his only system.  If something DOES happen to his card he could use the onboard solution until he can get his card replaced.  The fact that it exists and is just sitting there doing nothing isn't going to hurt his performance.

"Why pay for something you don't need?"

the right question is

"Why pay for something that you might need?"

and that question is even misleading because generally boards with video are cheaper than the ones without.

Wow, a lot of good responses and it seems that the "no onboard" crowd is winning but KellenDunk probably made the best point. I am mostly concerned with the onboard causing any problems simply because I want an nVidia card but some of the MoBos I have seen that I like for AMD tend to have ATI is their onboard video option. I know that AMD and ATI have a thing going and am wondering if there is a chance I can find a MoBo that does not use ATI as onboard video. I have checked and so far have not seen one but have not checked every MoBo out there yet.

I'm take it (from the "looking for a mobo that does not use ATI as onboard video") that you have an AMD CPU and would need a compatible mobo.  Well no need to worry about ATI/Nvidia conflicts there.  A while back I had an AMD compatible mobo with ATI on-board video and simply disabled it in the BIOS when I installed a Nvidia 8600 GS card.  I experienced no conflicts or ill-effects and you should find the same.

Given that people are using 4 GB of RAM or more an onboard video chip that uses 128 or even 256 of that will have little impact on system performance. Especially if the onboard chip is an higher end ATI or Nvidia chip. It all depends on the chipset does it not? If you have a good quality chipset I doubt you would see much difference between onbaord and PCI Express graphics if all you are doing is internet, email, word processing, and the every now and then 9 dollar PC game.

It only makes a difference to heavy PC powerusers and over-clocked gaming systems. It would be interesting to see some benchmarks on this issue.

AMD owns ATI. Their stuff is always going to go together. If you want to find onboard nvidia, look specifically at any mobo with an nvidia chipset. They would only have nvidia onboard graphics, not ATI.

I don't know why people are so concerned about onboard graphics consuming system resources. When you disable onboard gfx in the bios, the system doesn't know it exists. No resources or driver conflicts can possibly exist. If your card fails, just re-enable onboard video in the bios. Simple as that. Your mobo will come with a manual that explains how to do all of that in clear english with nice pictures too.

This is what I was truly looking for. To know that the onboard will not affect the PCI-e card. I ask only because we all know how some companies will try to mess with the competition and I would hate to have ATI mess around with my nVidia card. Thanks for the responses.