8600 GT Silent versus 4500HD on HD & BF2 (1 Viewer)

[geoffw]

Hi

I bought an Intel DGF45ID with integrated 4500HD, which works perfectly for Freeview etc, however i think i would now like to use my HTPC to play BF2 on my 40" LCD.

If i get a 8600GT silent, how will....

1. .....the DVI to HDMI converter thingie affect my pic when compared to by native HDMI out of the X4500HD - i have an idea that native HDMI has better pic.
2. .....BF2 play on a 40" 1920*1080 using this card?

cheers.

Geoff

 

[petsa]

Hi Geoff,

I have a 8600GT Silent in my HTPC and it has worked really well for me. Less of hassle than I understand many ATI-card owners have struggled with wrt drivers etc. It plays SDTV without any issues and for HDTV it does a nice job off-loading the CPU for h264 decoding.

From Wikipedia: "Because HDMI is electrically compatible with the signals used by Digital Visual Interface (DVI), no signal conversion is necessary, nor is there a loss of video quality when a DVI-to-HDMI adapter is used." so that should not be any issue either. I use DVI->HDMI for my Samsing 40".

As for playing BF2... I occassionaly play FIFA09 on my 40" LCD and it works OK. I guess the gfx card is not the top-of-the-line for gaming, since it is rather supposed to be silent than fast. It works OK but if your main interest is gaming on the PC I would suggest another card, but then you may suffer from more noise perhaps. As far as I know the 8600GT has been replaced with newer cards from Nvidia but I can not comment on their performance.

/Peter

 

[etheesdad]

1. as I understand it, No, but you cant get sound through DVI so if you were using it to carry both audio and video you would need to look at an alternative transport for the audio

2. Personally I doubt the 8600gt has the juice to run anything much at that resolution, even a game with modest system demands like bf2. - This is probably a question perhaps better asked on a BF2 enthusiast forum. Also, you should state your CPU specs as this will factor into the frame rates the 8600gt is capable of.

-- As an aside, it is probably still possible to obtain passively cooled 8600gt's that have native HDMI. I think Gainward and Zotac made them...

 

[Owlsroost]

nVidia cards can output sound via the DVI connector - the drivers work out from the monitor/TV EDID info if the connected device can accept audio-over-HDMI and enable it when appropriate (but the audio input to the card is via an internal SPDIF connector only - it doesn't appear as a Windows sound device like the ATi cards do).

The 9500GT is the current equivalant to the 8600GT - in fact the 9500GT is basically a re-badged 8600GT....I use a 9500GT in my system with MP and it's fine on video playback performance. I don't play games, but the 9500 is roughly equivalent in 3D performance to an ATi HD3650.

Tony

Edit: One problem nVidia can have is HDMI detection problems on reboots/resume from sleep with some TVs - I have this problem with my Panasonic LCD TV, so I have to use the workaround of disabling the nVidia driver helper service. nVidia changed the way DVI/HDMI detection works from the 185.xx drivers onwards, and this seems to have made the problem worse, so I've stuck with 182.50 drivers.