Which Video Card?

[opy01]

I have read a few recomendations for the 8600GT and GTS. I have also heard about Nvidia drivers in Vista being limited as far as overscan and stuff. I dont know if the newest drivers out are still having problems but the latest I read was you either had to do a bois fix or use beta drivers to get the extra features. I just put an ATI Radeon X1300 512 in my older PC that I am using until I get my new MB and CPU and the ATI works great with Sage and Vista right now. I am having problems with DVDs delaying every 6-7 seconds then skipping to where they are supposed to be but I was told this could be a DirectX 10 issue and I wont have to worry about that once I get my new system. I am ordering my new dule core system this week. I am getting the Asus P5W DH Deluxe with a 2.8GHz dual core and 2Gigs of ram to begin with. I will have the HVR1600 and PVR500 in it. I have a Sony 1080i TV and want the best picture I can get and as smooth as possible. I am curious what others are using for their video cards and what is more recomended to buy since I want to order this as well this week.

[stevech]

I read one random rag saying that the windows drivers for that new video chipset aren't yet debugged well enough. May be old news though.

[opy01]

Thanks, at least someone replied. I guess I can simplify this some.

What video card will work better on a new HTPC, ATI or Nvidia? Which brand and which model work best with SageTV and HDTV?

I am more of a gamer and I could buy one that would make my games rock but I thought that videos and HDTV had slightly different requirements.

[AWS]

My 6600 just died about two weeks ago by blowing two capacitors so I've been using an X1300 XT from a work PC. I also took the plunge and upgraded to Vista Ultimate. What I've seen so far:

The X1300 does a pretty good job but it's not without it's flaws. The overall PQ seems to be a little washed out and I'm getting some ghosting of the images. The latest drivers (as of this post) seem to have a good deal of "tweakable" settings; including overscan. I run a SD picture of 720 X 480. I think some of the problems I'm having now I can fix if I were to sit down, research the problems (here on this forum) and apply possible fixes. I've even bough PowerDVD Ultimate and installed the AVIVO (right acronym?) drivers from ATI/AMD but I can't seem to find the right settings to make it look as good as my last setup. I don't have long-term plans to use this card. I'm waiting to get an 8600 GTS.

When I do get my rig configured correctly again, it WILL be an 8600 GTS back with the NVidia decoders. BTW, I don't use this PC for anything other than SageTV.

AWS

[MeInMaui]

I've been running an 8600GTS on Windows XP for a few weeks now (since my 6600GT died). There were a few issues with getting the drivers to work properly (The nvidia control panel would not open) but once I got those fixed, it has been rock solid ever since.

I really like this card. Eventually nvidia will add H.264 hardware decoding support to the official XP drivers, but I'm in no rush for that. You could also consider an 8500GT. It has the same purevideo hardware but is less capable in the 3D department. You can pick up an 8500GT for less than $100. If you are budget minded, I think this is the best solution currently available. HTH.

Aloha,
Mike

[HawgGuy]

I just replaced my 7600GT with a passively cooled 8500GT for about $100. So far, so good though it's only been 1 day. The Vista drivers definitely are not as mature as the XP drivers and tweaks affecting scaling and overscan either don't work or are not yet implemented. That said, the picture is great and I have smooth playback of H.264 HD streams from my r5000 modified Dish receiver (though this is related more to the switch to Vista rather than the card).

[phelme]

I'll pimp a card that is working well for me which I recently purchased. I found on NewEgg a Sapphire X1650 XT PCI-E card for $85 (after a $20 rebate). I think this card proves you don't need the latest and greatest 3D hardware to get decent HD quality (it's more about raw graphics processor speed).

I'm running with an output of 1680x1080 or thereabouts, VMR9 using the ATI MPEG2 decoder that came stock with the card! No Purevideo! No PowerDVD! And everything works: transparent GUI, 720P & 1080I HD material and closed-captioning! Whee!

I'm frankly a bit amazed and expect it to stop working at any time. But it's been solid for a week! Check one out if you're in the market.

[opy01]

I got my new card last week and installed it on my new MB running a 2.4GHz core 2 duo with 2gigs ram to start out with (hopefully I can get the other 6 gigs by Christmas). This is the card I got http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125063 and it is awesome! Unfortunately I am running Vista so there are a few little bugs to be worked out but other than that it rocks.

[autoboy]

I'm running a HD2400pro. I had to make some registry tweeks for the 2400pro to make it handle HD, but it appears the 2600pro is going to be a fantastic HTPC card for HD.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q...0/index.x?pg=11