Motherboard question

Does the monitor connect to the motherboard? Ive been looking at some mother boards and ive noticed that most of them do not have the connection on the back that would fit with the connection on my monitor.

If the motherboard has the video hardware integrated, then it can. Otherwise the monitor connects to a video card attached to the motherboard.

Just to make sure you know: motherboard-integrated video chips generally SUCK for gaming, Guild Wars included.

ohhh ok i get it. so the video card has a slot for the monitor plug? and if so are all monitor plugs the same and will they all fit in the video card slot.

No. Older monitors, especially CRTs (and low-end LCDs) typically use VGA connectors, while most quality LCDs use DVI, which has slightly better image quality and doesn't suffer from any analog noise or other distortion.

Most decent video cards come with two DVI output sockets, and a DVI->VGA adapter for compatibility with older monitors.

thanks i just checked the card i want to buy and it has the two sockets and my monitor will fit in them. i have one more question, for the CD drive would a DVD drive work the same way or does it just read DVDs.

Yes, any DVD drive should be able to read CDs too.

Ok thanks a lot. I think I'm pretty much set on what i need in order to build a computer. I have a motherboard, Hard Drive,Processor, Memory, Video card, Power supply, a DVD drive and memory card drive. The motherboard has an integrated sound card and i was wondering if it can be changed. And im looking at software and was wondering if Windows Xp would be better than Windows Vista.

Disable onboard sound via BIOS. Turn the PC off, slot the new sound card into the relevant slot, power up, install drivers and reboot!

It's that simple!

If you don't like something about the integrated sound chip on the motherboard you can plug a dedicated sound card to the motherboard later if there's a free PCI slot.

For the operating system I'd recommend Windows XP. Vista's still immature, seems to have plenty of design issues, and doesn't offer much in return right now.

Just make sure the motherboard has the right types of slots and sockets for the video card, RAM and the CPU, and don't cheap out on the power supply; cheap junk PSUs have been known to catch fire (or just break and fry the rest of the computer) from the heavy load gaming puts on them. Google should be able to help you with the rest.

Does sound simple. Thanks for the info. All i need now is software.