8400, 8500 or 8600?

im building an HTPC purely for videos (no gaming)...

am i going to get any PQ improvement using a 8600 as opposed to a 8400 or 8500?

cheers,
andy

I suppose the 8600 series cards will be faster but the lower specced models will run cooler and require less power!! Have you also looked at the ATI 2400 and 2600 series as these will also have potentially good HD video acceleration!

Apparently the ATi cards are better for a HTPC cause they have hardware decoding for HD signals. Can't remember where I read that so do some investigating first!

The 8400/8500/8600 are supposed to have HD decoding capability although the 2400 and 2600 series cards are supposed to have a larger feature set(?) !

i would say 8600

I've got an 8600GTS and i'd recommend an ATI card instead because nVidia's drivers are junk.
And yes, that's in a Vista HTPC :(

but isnt it better to have the nvidia cards running with purevideo?

Not according to those who\'ve tested. ATI pwn NVidia in this one area. Also their Vista drivers are a lot more solid.

To tell you the truth they would probobly all cope with video files well.
I would mabee go for a higher spec 8500 if your only interested in video.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thorsson

Not according to those who've tested. ATI pwn NVidia in this one area. Also their Vista drivers are a lot more solid.

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really,i must check this out,because when i have looked purevideo has always been the way forward.

do you have any links?

What about a ATI 2600XT ?

Or if you do want nvidia a 8600 :confused:

The difference between ati and nvidia HD wise is that nvidia only support the H.264 codec

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Firingsquad

In addition, the Radeon HD 2600 series supports AMD’s Avivo HD technology. In a nutshell, Avivo HD provides dedicated hardware decode acceleration for playing back high definition Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies. AMD is quick to point out that their Radeon HD cards support both VC-1 and H.264 Codecs, whereas NVIDIA is limited to just H.264.

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http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...mance_preview/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by andyr300

really,i must check this out,because when i have looked purevideo has always been the way forward.

do you have any links?

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Pure Video only requires a dxva capable card. The 8/4/5/600 cards support dxva of mpeg 2 and h264 but not VC-1 (HD-DVD codec). ATI supports all 3.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by s_kinton

The difference between ati and nvidia HD wise is that nvidia only support the H.264 codec

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...mance_preview/

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Purevideo HD does Support VC-1 and a bunch of others
See: http://sg.nvidia.com/docs/CP/27894/P...son_060807.pdf

They also make an issue about it being able to decode Bluray / HD-DVD on nvzone
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_pvhd_build.html

I use purevideo without any issues, and really like it :)

Must be AMD properganda :)

I am in a similar boat (Though not similar enough to highjack the thread) and to be honest, if its purely for video, then the 8500GT should be fine. I was looking at one on scan, that was passively cooled, so no noise, which is great for a media PC. Let me find it...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=586390

And it runs with not that many volts needed. Personally, I want to be able to game a little, at least at HDTV native res, so I am thinking of the 2600XT, but there are a few questions that i need answered first (Size, PSU, Noise). let us know what you decide on!

JP