GPU For My HTPC... What Should I Get?

[Skinleech]

I've been experimenting with 24p on my HTPC too. I'm running as Asus M3N-HDMI board with a Geforce 8300 in built. I'm also running Windows 7 which could be part of the issue, but I've yet to lock down proper 24p playback.

You can select 23hz and 24hz from the Nvidia CP, and 24hz results in bang on 24.000 playback. 23hz seems to give the same, when what we really want is 23.976. Using the custom resulation selector I can create a res of 23.976 but uit never seems to be 100% accurate, and the true refresh rate reports back as 23.974 or thereabouts.

I did a clean install of Win 7 over the weekend, grabbed the latest drivers & set them to 23hz and watched some 1080i/30 mpeg2 content deinterlaced to 23.976 and it played silky smooth. I need to experiment a bit more with avc & vc-1 encoded stuff before I can say whether it's really working.

Do ATI offer a smilar custom resolution tool? And have you tried Powerstrip to lock your card to that refresh rate?

[crazyfool]

yh on ati you can do that and 23hz is apparently 23.976 anyways so that should be perfect but on mine it still has syncing issues... I played around with it a bit today in different players and I cant get it to stay in sync for more then about 5 minutes and tbh I'm fed up with playing around with settings and players etc... I going to buy a 9500gt once scan gets the xfx one back in stock and pray this solves my problems...

[crazyfool]

change of plans... turns out that an 8400gs can easily decode vc1/h264 if it is a g98 core... now according to newegg.com this card is a g98 core and it looks low profile to me although it doesn't seem to come with a low profile bracket... anyone know if it is definately low profile and if it is where can i get a low profile bracket for it

[GoNz0]

i thought 24hz was 23.976, its rounded up as it would only confuse the average person if every hz had decimals.

do you not find the image dark at 24hz, mine was dark so i set it to 60hz and i now have a nice brigh image, it seems to do a good enough job on 24p playback even on 60hz

[Skinleech]

i thought 24hz was 23.976, its rounded up as it would only confuse the average person if every hz had decimals.

do you not find the image dark at 24hz, mine was dark so i set it to 60hz and i now have a nice brigh image, it seems to do a good enough job on 24p playback even on 60hz

No, some Blu-rays are actually encoded at 24.000 not 23.976. In common talk it's rounded up to 24, but you really want to pin the refresh rate down to 23.976.

I have no brightness differences at 24/25/50/60hz on my HTPC/TV combo.

[Salazaar]

I doubt it'll really help the OP but it might be of some interest that I have to have mine set to 59hz. If I up it to 60hz I lose the onboard audio signal for some reason (780G passing through to an Onkyo AV amp), doesn't seem to affect the picture quality though.