!! Benefit of gfx card features for HTPC (1 Viewer)

[jcee]

Nvidia and ATIs gfx card are heavily discussed here..

As they are advertised with so many movie features like. ...
hardware decoding support,
Programmable Video Processor,
Hardware Decode Acceleration,
Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, WMV, and MPEG-2 HD and SD videos with minimal CPU usage, Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing, High-Quality Scaling, Inverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction)
Bad Edit Correction,Video Color Correction, LCD Sharpening
Integrated SD and HDTV Output


I was thinking what is really usefull in terms of HTPC.. It all sounds great, but what is reall uesfull and/or a-must-have?!

As I own a FX5200 card I was thinking of replacing it..

Low CPU utilization would be very nice to lower temps and fan noise..
So what has to be selected..

One other issue is that DVI coonected to HDI is displayed in overscan on many displays (as on my plasma).. Therefore the Pixels do not get on the panel 1 by 1.
Scaling and intensive adjustment options would be fine..

So what can a modern gfx card do for us HTPC guys?!



And one stupid question you please allow:
Which features does my FX5200 have?
Does it has hardware accelerated MPEG2 decoding? Has it Purevideo?

 

[Callifo]

Since a 5200 already is a DX9 video card, I cant see a new one lower cpu usage anything drastic. And you wont get better connectivity if your already using DVI.

The only thing that the 5200 lacks is the purevideo features and even that I cant tell you what that might do as Ive never not used hardware supporting it.

 

[jcee]

For me it seems that the newer cards (=newer than FX5200) have better hardware acceleration and therefore would cause less CPU usage.. (assuming you are using NVIDIA Purevideo codec).

Can anyone confirm that?

 

[Callifo]

Well I went from a 9250 to a 6200 because I wanted better connectivity. Doing that I saw no improvement visually (performace wise) but it maybe dropped 5% cpu time tops. PQ was a whole lot better (but wont effect you in this case).