[Randy Mathis]

I know that there is a reason why Radeon cards are favored over NVIDIA but I forgot what it is. My motherboard only accepts NVIDIA chipsets in its AGP port. I am updating my bios but I doubt that it will change things. I am only going to be using my htpc for dvd's and cd's so I am not too worried about it but I would still like to know. I went back 6 pages searching for a reason but I couldn't find it. Running a search gives too much through which to search.


Thank you!

 

[jkaiser]

I doubt that is holds much anymore, but the rule of Radeon used to be around the fact that Radeon used 10 bit DACs where all the other cards were 8 bit DACS - which means 4 times the precision.

 

[Randy Mathis]

Thanks

 

[kagato]

What kind of Mobo did you get that accepts NVidia only???


At the moment ATI is the king of video cards. At least in the frames per second category. But that's just one battle in a long war. Expect NVidia to strike back at some point.


Still, the biggest reason I see for going with ATI (on a HTPC) is the fact that many of the latest high end ATI cards can output native Y/Pr/Pb.

 

[Randy Mathis]

Micro ATX K7SEM. It will take a radeon via pci but the agp slot is given priority and better allows memory sharing from main memory if needed. The mb has fantastic built in video capabilities but it doesn't have a dvi port.

 

[Morbius]

Quote:

Originally posted by Randy Mathis Micro ATX K7SEM. It will take a radeon via pci but the agp slot is given priority and better allows memory sharing from main memory if needed.

Randy,


Gee - that's peculiar. If the AGP slot conforms to the AGP standard - then any AGP board should work in that slot.


If, for some reason, it doesn't conform to the AGP standard - then I don't see how they get away with calling it an

AGP slot.

 

[lrowland]

Randy,

I did some digging on this ECS motherboard. You can use a Radeon card in it. It has a standard AGP(4x) slot that will work fine with a Radeon or an Nvidia AGP video card.


Larry

 

[Randy Mathis]

Thanks guys


I was going by the manual that I have in my hands right now. It specifically says "only supports NVIDIA 4xAGP cards"


Maybe with the new bios update this will be taken care of.


I would prefer a radeon as their cards do rate higher in many tests that i have seen.

 

[coldie]

Not sure why your manual says that, but yeah it will work with any AGP 4x card.


Another reason ATI is sometimes preferred is that NVidia hasn't supported interlaced modes. This will change shortly.


I think the big reason now that people use ATI over NVidia is simply inertia. I use NVidia because I believe NVDVD on an NVidia card is simply the best looking DVD playback, but that may just be me.


Coldie

 

[dandrewk]

ATI also uses real nice, smooth filters in overlay mode. This makes for very pleasant, full screen DVD playing.

 

[Randy Mathis]

Moot point now. I downloaded the system bios update today. Now my puter is a giant paper weight.