ATI Video cards for HTPC?

[avonnied]

Anyone have a comparison of the Nvidia or ATI cards for an HTPC?

getting a new system and i need to upgrade to a PCIe video card...


right now i am looking at either

ATI
X1300 (50$-70$)
X1600 (90$)

or

Nv
6600 (100$)
7300 (54$-65$)
7600GS (100$)


it'll be coupled with an AMD3500+ and 1G Ram and will be connected to a 1080p monitor via DVI and a Projector via VGA

my main concern is getting good performance out of a 1080 HD signal using VMR9, which my 2200+/6600GT just can't handle right now (hence the upgrade)

cost is somewhat of a concern , probably 100$ or less (or else the 7600GT might be an option)..

has anyone had any experience with ATI?

[blade]

Where to start...............

Out of the 7300 series cards only the gt has all of the HD features your 6600gt has. Anything else isn't going to do per pixel adaptive deinterlacing on HD content. The 7600gs has all the same features as the 6600gt.

Adaptive deinterlacing is the most demanding part of HD playback for my 6600gt. If you plan to get a card that doesn't do per pixel adaptive then you might as well just keep your 6600gt and choose a different type of deinterlacing since that is what you'll be getting with the new card anyway. Other types of deinterlacing are less demanding and should give you smooth playback with the 6600.

With that said, many people are running VMR9 with a 6600GT and adaptive deinterlacing. What decoder are you using? I don't have HD, but have tested mine with numerous HD clips and most play smoothly. For a few demanding clips I had to overclock the card to 550 GPU/1,100 Mem to get it perfectly smooth.

A few things I've found from testing my 6600gt:

1 - You need to run in FSE.
2 - Video content (60 fps) is much more demanding than film content (24 fps). The only thing that should be giving you problems is video content.
3 - 3d and memory overclocking can help with very demanding film content.
4 - Adaptive deinterlacing is what really taxes the card. If all else fails choose a different type of deinterlacing in the Nvidia tray icon.

[avonnied]

that might be some of my problem is that i cannot run in FSE mode, (Sage crashes)..

in overlay mode the HD content plays great, but with VMR it really suffers (menus get really sluggish etc..)..

which i think if i could just upgrade my socket A CPU i would be fine..

but since i am upgrading to a PCIe system i have to get a new video card, i'm hoping its a good opportunity to get a card better than the 6600, although it sounds like i may be good just trying to find a PCIe 6600, coupled with the new CPU would be fine..

[blade]

Originally Posted by avonnied

that might be some of my problem is that i cannot run in FSE mode, (Sage crashes)..

in overlay mode the HD content plays great, but with VMR it really suffers (menus get really sluggish etc..)..

which i think if i could just upgrade my socket A CPU i would be fine..

I believe you need FSE for pretty much all of the Nvidia cards. I know Sage is charging for v6, but the new beta is supposed to have fixed a lot of the problems with FSE.

but since i am upgrading to a PCIe system i have to get a new video card, i'm hoping its a good opportunity to get a card better than the 6600, although it sounds like i may be good just trying to find a PCIe 6600, coupled with the new CPU would be fine..

Why are you upgrading? If it is just to get smooth HD playback I'd probably stick it out and get my current rig smoothed out. If you have other reasons then I'd probably go with a cooler running 7xxx series over an old 6600gt. I wouldn't expect any of the lower end models to perform any better though.

[avonnied]

yea its not just for HD content, which i do get a free v6 upgrade for sageTV (since i bought the v5 key.. at least as far as i understand my upgrade is free)..

i ran into some good luck and found a used evga 7800GT OC CO for 125$ so i went ahead and snagged that..

thanks for all the input..