Which ATI card for HTPC & hardware acceleration under XP?

post #1 of 3

5/14/08 at 12:42pm

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304 Posts. Joined 10/2006
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I'm looking to add a BluRay drive to my PC.
Since I refuse to move to Vista at this point, it looks like I'm SOL for getting Purevideo HD to work on my 8800GT under XP.
So my two options are I either:
1) stick to my 8800GT, and hope that my AMD X2 4400 + 2gb RAM is enough for decoding.
Or 2), get an ATI card that that I've heard is more HTPC friendly than NVIDIA cards, and offload decoding to it.

If I stick with NVIDIA, is a 2.2ghz AMD X2 and 2gb RAM a reasonable bet to play BD SMOOTHLY and problem-free??

Also, if I decide to get an ATI card for HW acceleration, can someone point me in the right direction? I haven't been caught up on ATI cards for several years, as the last one I owned was a 9700pro and its been NVIDIA for me ever since.

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post #2 of 3

5/14/08 at 1:17pm

bjmarchini
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3,973 Posts. Joined 9/2007
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Quote:

Originally Posted by gts007

I'm looking to add a BluRay drive to my PC.
Since I refuse to move to Vista at this point, it looks like I'm SOL for getting Purevideo HD to work on my 8800GT under XP.
So my two options are I either:
1) stick to my 8800GT, and hope that my AMD X2 4400 + 2gb RAM is enough for decoding.
Or 2), get an ATI card that that I've heard is more HTPC friendly than NVIDIA cards, and offload decoding to it.

If I stick with NVIDIA, is a 2.2ghz AMD X2 and 2gb RAM a reasonable bet to play BD SMOOTHLY and problem-free??

Also, if I decide to get an ATI card for HW acceleration, can someone point me in the right direction? I haven't been caught up on ATI cards for several years, as the last one I owned was a 9700pro and its been NVIDIA for me ever since.

I can playback AVC (the hardest codec of BD) with my AMD 2.6 5000 x2 BBE with a 128mb 6600gs video card with HWA off. My son can play AVC on his with an x1650GT and an AMD 3800 x2 2.2. So you may be ok. The problem you are going to run into is HDCP compiance, but I would just try it first and see how it plays. You won't really know until you do. I have a Dell 4700 with 2.8 P4 that plays back BDs just fine. I have an HD2600XT PCI-e in it which takes a major load off of it.

You are going to want atleast a HD2600pro or HD2400xt. make sure they are hdcp compliant

I think you might be ok, but there is no way to be sure until you try it. Some people will tell you that you need a Quad core to run it right. these people are just trying to justify why they spent so much on their setup.

The other thing that can really tax your system is the sound playback. TrueHD and DTS-MA can really slow down some systems.

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post #3 of 3

5/14/08 at 6:22pm

128 Posts. Joined 9/2001
Location: Blaine, MN
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I just bought this card a few weeks ago and am quite happy with its performance:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121237

WinXP, PowerDVD OEM 7.3 (upgraded from PDVD 6 with DD/DTS, still get DD/DTS!

), latest Catalyst drivers provided by ASUS website.