News - MSI slips out five HTPC graphics cards based on AMD's RV730

[HEXUS]

R4600 HDMI series designed specifically for use in a media PC, says MSI.

Read more.

[MadduckUK]

only one of these fits anything like the htpc mould, and even that could do with being low profile..

or is htpc the new angle they are trying to shift midrange cards from? why one of these and not a 4350/4550 thats half height and passive and cheaper

[Kamakazie]

only one of these fits anything like the htpc mould, and even that could do with being low profile..

or is htpc the new angle they are trying to shift midrange cards from? why one of these and not a 4350/4550 thats half height and passive and cheaper

Some people want to do some gaming on their HTPC and these are significantly faster than the cards you mentioned. There are a lot of HTPC cases now that can take full size cards too.
I am looking at a 4830 for my HTPC.

[kingpotnoodle]

Some people want to do some gaming on their HTPC and these are significantly faster than the cards you mentioned. There are a lot of HTPC cases now that can take full size cards too.
I am looking at a 4830 for my HTPC.

Also the more powerful cards have use for folding@home and when the tools mature a bit more for accelerating video encoding with GPUs.

[matty-hodgson]

but these aren't made for HTPCs! HTPCs are supposed to be tiny little things that sit underneith the TV and never make a sound.

this is a little like getting a 12" netbook.. you've not really got a netbook, you've got a notebook.
same with the HTPC, you've not got a HTPC, you've got a small PC

[Funkstar]

I am surprised there are four cards with active cooling and only one with passive to be honest, as as Madduck says, no low profile cards.

Granted they all have 7.1 surround passthrough over HDMI, which is the only thing that makes these HTPC cards in my mind.

Depending on price, I may be tempted to cram one of them into my main HTPC at some point even though it already has built in ATI graphics purely for the HDMI audio.

[Clunk]

Is it a suitable for de hutpuck?

[Jay]

I have a passive XFX 8500GT with HDCP that I got last year for buttons that can play 1080P no problem... why bother with these?

[Funkstar]

Three words: HDMI audio output

[MadduckUK]

Some people want to do some gaming on their HTPC and these are significantly faster than the cards you mentioned. There are a lot of HTPC cases now that can take full size cards too.
I am looking at a 4830 for my HTPC.

Three words: HDMI audio output

well the 8500 does pass through, so as long a you have onboard audio thats covered, whether its 7.1 or not im not too sure

[PeterStoba]

Is it a suitable for de hutpuck?

Never fail to make me laugh

[MadduckUK]

Some people want to do some gaming on their HTPC and these are significantly faster than the cards you mentioned. There are a lot of HTPC cases now that can take full size cards too.
I am looking at a 4830 for my HTPC.

yeah, thats a gaming card.. just because you can use one in a HTPC doesnt mean its the best card suited to that. and also, as far as hardware requirements go gaming > htpc soo you are simply putting together a gaming pc with a tuner or two

Also the more powerful cards have use for folding@home and when the tools mature a bit more for accelerating video encoding with GPUs.

didnt think that was a requirement of a HTPC, perhaps thats sonys fault for getting the ps3 doing it. seems irrelevant to me.



soo in conclusion. these are as much htpc cards as a gtx 295, there are cheaper and more efficient cards that will do the job of a pure htpc available, but will you cant deny it could actually do the task.

still. shoddy marketing wanting people to "step up" to a card with a bit more profit margin.

[Irien]

I replaced an Nvidia 8500 card with a passive Radeon (one of these would have been ideal, but I went with a 4550 board instead) just after Christmas.

Advantages of one of these ATI 4-series cards:

1) HDMI audio 7.1 uncompressed. The nvidia 8500 boards just allowed SPDIF pass-through which means 2 channels of uncompressed audio, or 5.1 dolbydigital/DTS if your sound source supports realtime DD/DTS encoding (which many/most don't). If you're going into a decent home cinema amp, this is a big deal, since it is the only way you'll currently get the best out of Dolby TrueHD/DTS-Master HD audio tracks. (With the exception of Asus's pass-thru add-on board, which has its own issues)

2) Consistant black levels. With the appropriate registry keys, ATI boards seem to use the same black levels for SD and HD content. Nvidia cards (depending on drivers) seem to be quite variable on black levels.

3) More comprehensive HD offload. For HTPCs, you usually want a very low-energy (read: slow) CPU to keep heat/noise/elec-bills down. The more comprehensive the offload the better. For example, neither an 8500 or a 3450 were able to give my HTPC ideal blu-ray playback with all features (eg. PIP), whereas the 4-series ATI cards can do dual stream decode, and various other things (dynamic contrast... ho-hum). Nvidia have this on the G92 series onwards.

Hope this helps.

[rgrele]

Just purchased and installed the MSI R4650 512MB in my older Sony RA820G desktop. Running Windows XP SP3, 1GB Memory.

After updating Catalyst to latest version, Blu Ray plays smoothly through HDMI. But no audio is being passed via HDMI.

I read in the Catalyst update that HDMI audio was only supported with Windows Vista.

Is there a way to get audio to output via HDMI with Windows XP?

[Irien]

For HDMI from xp....

Make sure you're using an official AMD/ATI hdmi dongle (or the hdmi port on the card if it has one).

Download ATI HDMI audio driver from ATI website, and install

Make sure default sound card is set to be the ATI HDMI audio driver

I've done this successfully in the last 2 months with a 4550 board to an Onkyo 875 amp.

It is actually easier on XP than on Vista, provided you remember to tell the system to
use the HDMI audio driver.

NOTE: there are issues with resuming from standby etc if the amp isn't turned on, the system
will revert to DVI. This is generally work-aroundable by messing with the order in which you
turn things on, and what source etc is selected. For best results, have your TV/Amp turned on
before powering up the card.


PS, remember that it will only send up to 7.1 of PCM audio - it will not send TrueHD/DTS-MA
raw audio, so you need to set your player software (eg. TotalMedia Theater) to 7.1 "analogue".

To pass raw stuff via HDMI, you need the Asus Xonar HDAV card. Or similar (I think auzentech are doing one).

[rgrele]

Thanks for all the info Irien.

I solved the problem by downloading, and installing the correct XP ATI HDMI audio driver from the MSI support web page.