[NVIDIA] New silent card - Nvidia or ATI??? (1 Viewer)

[sbp]

Hi, I would like to hear your experiences with different video cards.

I have a rather old system (Nvidia 6200 AGP card) and is going to upgrade to a new motherboard with PCI slots. Therefore, I would like to know if I should go with a new Nvidia card, or should buy an ATI-card?
What are the pro's and con's for each.

For Nvidia I have been looking at an 9600 GT fan-less model, will that be OK?
For ATI, I have no clue - I have always been using Nvidia.

Regards
Steen

 

[happy]

9600 is a good choice

ATi wise take a look at either the 4350, 4550, ive used both of these cards and for HD point of view they work flawlessly never missed a beat, those two are the HTPC choice boards, if you require anymore power say also playing games with your htpc i'd personally pick the 4770 its a mid-range card gives awesome performance for its price range and doesnt get to hot although you will need a 6pin connector from your power supply to power the 4770

ive got a 4350 for sale if your interested in going ATi

 

[Owlsroost]

If you want to stay nVidia the 9500GT is OK with interlaced HD too.

Tony

 

[sbp]

Thanks for your replies.

Regarding the difference between Nvidia or ATi.
I don't want to stay with Nvidia, I simply would like to buy the best card for use in dedicated Mediaportal computer. Is it correct that most people use ATI - or?

Regards
Steen

 

[happy]

at the end of the day its your choice mate, i personally always pick ATi have done since i bought my first ATi 9000 card, with my paper round money, they've been good to me never had major problems.

ive had a few nvidia cards, 5200 6200 currently got a laptop with a 8400gs, nothing wrong with them just dont appeal to me, only reason i have them is coz i had no choice on the matter

seeing as your already expirienced with nvidia, try a ATi if you encounter problems or such, try sort them out if not next time go with nvidia

 

[etheesdad]

swings and roundabouts. any of the cards suggested above are excellent choices for an htpc.

nvidia 9500/9600gt

ati 4550/4650

all good HTPC cards and will do great 1080

 

[Owlsroost]

ATi cards are probably more popular at the moment because the HD4xxx family support multi-channel PCM audio over HDMI.

On the other hand, ATi seem to be in a phase of introducing bugs with new driver releases sometimes e.g. https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/codecs-external-players-55/grey-blacks-internal-player-evr-60475/ - but I'm sure nVidia will manage to break something too at some point

Tony

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

but I'm sure nVidia will manage to break something too at some point

That's the new auto detect TV resolution then in driver 185,xx, does not think mine is 720x1280

Personally have always seen less complaints about nvidia than ati, search the forums and ATI does crop up a hell of a lot, all you need to read is hoborg's SAF thread, and how many times they break dxva.

I would go for a silent nvidia 9500gt (runs off the pci-e power supply) , the only downside to this is they can be quite large and take two slots, where ATI heatsinks seem to be smaller.

 

[sbp]

Thank you for your advise.
I think then I will take a silent 9600GT

 

[FantaXP7]

Don't know if you have already gone ahead and purchased a card, but one thing to consider is the audio over HDMI factor between the cards. Not sure what you are planning to do for audio so this may be irrelevant, but I am pretty sure ATI has the edge right now over NVIDIA.

from XBit Labs:

"Today, the most advanced implementation of the audio-over-HDMI feature is available with ATI Radeon HD 4800/4600/4500 series cards. The integrated audio core from Realtek can output 7.1 audio (192kHz/24bits per sample) with a bit rate of 6.144Mbps in AC3, DTS, Dolby True HD, DTS HD and LPCM formats. Nvidia’s GeForce 8, 9 and GTX 200 series are limited by the capabilities of the S/PDIF interface and support 5.1 Dolby Digital, 5.1 DTS, and 2-channel LPCM. The integrated graphics cores Intel GMA 4500 and GeForce 8300 can output 7.1 LPCM audio, too."

Someone here at this forum referred me to this article when I had trouble deciding on a video card and it helped me a lot.

http://xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/media-playback_2.html#sect0