Cheap card (no gaming req) (1 Viewer)

[jmbillings]

Bored of faffing with my onboard ATI HD3200 now (can't get TV working well at all and latest drivers don't even see the card and give me any options, see various other threads of mine!) how would this compare as a cheap upgrade? (GT610 based) Gets a much higher score on Videocardbenchmark. I don't need great 3D performance (I don't use the htpc for games) but will it be good for TV, specifically de-interlacing DVB-S, and also playing back HD MKVs?

 

[The_Stig]

The usual recommendation here on forums is the GT430 although I cannot tell personally. Should be in pretty much the same price and speed range as your first thought.

 

[onelegend]

The gt430 is obsolete if I'm not mistaken

It has been rebadged to a gt 620/630 I believe.

Nvidia I would go for a gt 620/630/640, a little more money over your 610 but its worth it, talking another £5-10

Amd I would go for a 6570 or a 6670 as budget permits. 6450 is equivalent to your 610

Amd is the better choice for live tv due to superior vector adaptive deinterlacing 6570 is around £40-50. 6670 around 10 more at present. 6450 is bare minimum verging on struggling to do 1080i with vector adaptive. A little more money will get you the 6570 and will be worth it imo.

Try to get gddr5 version of whatever you choose

 

[Owlsroost]

If you go for a GT430/530/630 (these are basically re-badged versions of the same card), make sure you get one with 128-bit wide memory - there are a few models around with only 64-bit wide memory.

The de-interlacing quality on the GT430/530/630 is fine - just as good as AMD as far as I can tell. (You don't get any control of de-interlacing quality with nVidia, so I suspect the low-end cards might have lower-quality de-interlacing, for HD at least).

Tony

 

[onelegend]

Aye

Getting hard to source 128 bit and gddr5 in the lower end cards though.

Best I can find is a evga gt 630 for £50

Deinterlacing comparison is based upon anandtechs gpu testing. They are close and unless your eye is good you prob won't notice.

Like for like spec wise imo and my purchase order
6670 ddr5 > 6570 ddr3 > gt 630 (rebranded 440)

Not much in it between the 6570 and 630 tho, 6570 will use less power, 630 has nvidias drivers so depends on budget

Deffo don't go bottom end, I made that error, whilst better then the onboard it struggles with 1080i.

If your not going HD then the 610 will be adequate

 

[SciDoctor]

With ATI keep above 4650 going below will give you borderline performance (lower deinterlacing algorithms) at best or problems.

So the key is the '6' in the second digit; so 46xx ,56xx, 66xx (or rebadged versions)

An 4650 AGP gives me upto 1080i50/60 @1080p (the most difficult setting for video at the moment apart from some 4k test files) without issues below that and performance suffers.

 

[Owlsroost]

From what I remember of test results over on the AVS forum, for nVidia it doesn't make any difference to de-interlacing performance between DDR3 and GDDR5 memory (on 128 bit wide GT430/530/630 at least). AMD cards seem to be more performance sensitive to memory bandwidth (from what I've seen).

But if you can get GDDR5 for about the same price as DDR3 then I'd go for it

Tony

 

[jmbillings]

Thanks for all the follow up replies. Update- I'd already decided to punt on the cheap card I originally linked to before some of the later replies came in. I've just installed it, and so far, all my HD TV problems are resolved
(OK I've not used it for ages, but in initial testing the picture is smooth, no flicker, no breakup)

Can't complain for the price! A downside for some may be the fan - I can't really hear it tbh, a I have a case fan and cpu fan too (no, my system ain't silent) but my motherboard precludes the use of fatter big heatsink cards unless I lose one of my DVB/S ones...)

 

[kiwijunglist]

My ATI recommendation is

ATI HD6450 / ATI HD6570 / ATI HD7750

Cheap / Middle Road / Excellent

All should be sufficently good for 98% of users, but if your not going for lowest cost possible go for the 6570/7750.