Palit 9600GT for HTPC...

[Skyllz]

I found this for cheap on a local website. How much you think it's worth and I dont have any reasons to think it would not be a good HTPC video card but... I'm asking people that might know better beforehand...

HDMI output on card, cooler is supposed to be quiet, should be more then enough I think for blueray with a dual core and 2g of ram.

Palit Microsystems

Thanks.

[crazyhorsejohnny]

If it falls through, I have a Powercolour HD4670 1GB up for sale. This would be a perfect card for a HTPC build.

[p3t3rson]

A 9600GT is fine for a HTPC. I run a 8600GT myself and have do problems play 1080p movies. I would only recommend upgrading if you intend on playing games.

[JD]

It would be alright but it doesn't have it's own audio chip for the HDMI like ATI cards do. So it'll be a bit more cumbersome to get audio over HDMI. And if you aren't gaming, don't really need a 9600GT.

And what are you considering cheap? You can get a HD4350 for $25 typically during NCIX sales.

[Silvgearx]

easiest way to play h.264 with nvidia card is to get coreAVC.

if your using hdmi sound you best to use ATI cards. If i remember correctly the hdmi sound drivers comes with ati drivers (hdmi only available on HD2xxx series and up)

that 4350 will be great choice for $25

and nvidia 9 series are excellent choice for easy 1080p decoding

[JD]

Originally Posted by 5ILVgeARX

easiest way to play h.264 with nvidia card is to get coreAVC.

if your using hdmi sound you best to use ATI cards. If i remember correctly the hdmi sound drivers comes with ati drivers (hdmi only available on HD2xxx series and up)

that 4350 will be great choice for $25

and nvidia 9 series are excellent choice for easy 1080p decoding

Yeah, HDMI audio drivers are packed with the Catalyst package. And I guess I should of mentioned with ATI you'd need a fairly capable CPU for HD playback. Though I'm using DivX's new H.264 codec on my HTPC (E5200 w/ HD4350) and the CPU usage is under 20% typically for 720p MKV. So you probably don't need too much CPU power. Should note that the DivX codec is multithreaded though so that could be helping.

I've ran CoreAVC in the past as well which also works good even if you don't use CUDA. Still uses less CPU than most H.264 codecs out there.

[Silvgearx]

For some odd reasons ATI gpus usually help decode h.264 without the needs for third party software.

And nvidia with its newest 191 drivers have finally caught up with ATI

And with CoreAVC + Cuda it can decode almost 90% of the h.264 with the click of a button