Right now looking at building a new system and have narrowed the choice to an Asus Z-87 A. My question is this...this model have integrated graphics, some do at least, so is it not necessary to purchase an additional graphics card now? Or is the graphics provided on some models not very good and a graphics card purchase is still a must? The processor i am looking at is the Intel Core i7-4771 Haswell 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo). However there is also the Intel® Core™ i7-4770K Processor which is almost identical but $30 more. How to choose among the very close options. Thanks in advance for all your comments.
These days, and for that Asus Z-87 A too, integrated graphics comes with the CPU, not the motherboard. Since you're thinking about an i7 4770, you'll be getting Intel HD4600 graphics, which are ok for day to day usage and light/older gaming, movies and whatnot. You need buy a dedicated graphics card if you want to play games. The price/quality of your dedicated card will depend on what games you want to play, and what your budget is.
As for the 4771 vs 4770k, they are basically the same processer, except the 4770k is unlocked and you can overclock it. If you don't want to overclock, go for the 4770.
so depending on the cpu i may or may not need a graphics card? I do not do any overclocking but like the performance offered by the asus card. Its good for video stuff of which i am doing more and more these days.
If you want to encode video, I highly recommend buying a dedicated graphics card (also called discrete graphics card). If you don't want to spend a lot of money, buying used is probably the best solution. A used GTX460 will do wonders, for example. Above that maybe a GTX650TI Boost, if you can find one. On the red side (AMD graphics) you pretty much get what you pay for, but do check benchmarks online, because AMD prices are probably inflated due to the mining thing or whatever. My suggestion is keep it simple and buy nVidia.