Hey all, I have been muling over the card I would like to buy for my HTPC. For the majority of the time, I suppose this PC would be used for HTPC duties such as TV streaming, BluRay etc, however, the card must be able to bit-stream full definition audio as I want my amp to decode this. But what's the point in connecting it to a nice 42" plasma if you can't let loose every once in a while? So, how good are the more powerful cards at keeping power usage, temperatures and noise down when the are being relatively easily taxed? I have been looking at the new 460's, although the news that a 450 maybe just around the corner might just be what I'm after. £200 is affordable. Thoughts please.
I'm currently looking @ 5670 - no extra power connector so under 75w. http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?leg=&psn=000101&pid=309 Same price as a GT240 here.. Just a suggestion
Well your plasma might be 42", but its still 1920×1080 or 1024×768, so anything for £200 will be overkill IMO. You can change the fan profiles on a card to keep the noise down or go for an after market solution. I'd wait and see what price point the 450 launches at and how it shapes up, or just go for a mid-high ATI 5 series, a 5750 will do just about everything at 1920x1080, streams Blu-ray audio and can be had for ~£105. That said, there will obviously be more noise and heat than if you went for a 5450, which is passive, only costs 40 quid but will be pants for gaming. My main advice would be, even if this is an HTPC/gaming hybrid, dropping £200 for its graphics card would be a waste.
I would honestly look at either the new 460, or 450 upon its release, but not forgetting the 5770 or 5830. even if its 1080p screen, that's not far off a 1680x1050 resolution of a 20-22in computer screen so any card near to the top end of gaming cards would do very well at this resolution indeed. Personally i would go for the 5770, its cheap enough and powerful enough for the odd bit of gaming.
If he wants to game at 1920x 1080 he will need more than a 5670 or 5770 Buy a 460 just make profiles for whet your doing Tv viewing and gaming 10 % fan 40-50% Should be fine
The plasma at the mo is only actually 1366x768, but even now I am probably moving rooms so may well upgrade and the next one will almost certainly be 1920x1080. Whatever I buy I think it would be necessary to think about the future and gaming at full 1080.
Erm.... I'm playing most games @ 1920x1080 on a standard 4850 without problems, just sayin.... so a 5770 will be sure capable to do so aswell.
5750/5770. As long as your not greedy and expect to play DX11 games with 8xAA and every slider to the right you'll be fine. 5770 is between the 4870 and 4890 in performance, the former of which I was using to play every DX9 game I had at top settings with 2xAA at 1920x1200.
I don't know about the new nVidia range - but the ATI HD 5xxx cards do audio passthrough over HDMI. The HD 5770 certainly games nicely at 1920x1080 - rampaging through GTA IV is far more fun on a 50" plasma! I've had to turn down some of the settings but it still looks awesome.
You need software, usually PowerDVD, to get Bluray sound out a PC full stop. The difference is that the software is mature for the 5 series and not up to snuff yet for H55 CPUs or the Fermi cards.
Ok, I have found the bit that I couldn't remember - HDCP and PAP. So in order to get bit streaming of full channel, true HD audio (non downsampled) via HDMI, I thought that not only do you need the software to support HDCP/PAP, you also need the corect hardware. I didn't think that the ATI cards supported this and only a few audio cards did, such as the ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe or the Auzentech Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD? Not sure about the NVida cards. However, this info is bassed on my research froma while ago.
Yeah, when the Xonar was launched it was the only way to get full Blu ray sound out, but the ATI cards are fully compliant and do incorporate HDCP.
You definitely need HDCP compliance on both hardware and software - TV/GPU/HDMI cable all need to be compliant, as does the software. It's pretty much a given that you'll have that with hardware from the last few years or so. TV/HDMI compliance is a given with any recent TV, monitor or cable, and I'm certain that all GPUs are also compliant - I know it was an issue in 2006/7 with some cards/monitors not supporting it but from memory I'm certain that all nVidia 8000 series and newer & all ATI X1600+ and newer all support HDCP. PowerDVD and Arcsoft Totlamedia are, with their current versions, both HDCP compliant. PAP - don't know what that is. Can you let me know? I'll have a look round. Not sure about full channel surround tbh - I've considered it but I'm happy enough with stereo TV speakers so haven't really looked into it fully (and a bowl of popcorn definitely improves my viewing experience over surround sound and 1080p). Even so, I have a blu-ray drive for my gaming rig that came with a bundled copy of Power DVD 7.3 - and that's more than happy sending stereo sound to my TV over HDMI. Admittedly it doesn't answer you question but it definitely will send Blu-Ray audio of some kind over a cheapy HDMI 1.3 cable via an ATI HD 5xxx card (which I'm certain supports HDCP - not sure about PAP though) AND Power DVD 7.3/Windows Media Player - even Windows sounds go through along with everything else, so long as the GPU is selected as the default sound output. The Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 would definitely provide what you want and does video passthrough over HDMI - if you've got £110 to play with.
I'm in a similar situation so thanks guys for all your suggestions. I was thinking of a Sapphire 5770 Vapor-X as its cool and silent as well as packing enough punch.
HDCP - Is a copy protection mechanism stopping people from ripping digital content directly in a bit by bit fashion. You are correct in saying that most bits of hardware have incorporating this feature for many years (although I believe there are ways around this) PAP - stands for "Protected Audio Path". As far as I believe it is a way in which full bandwidth audio from Bluray movies with AACS encryption must pass from source to decode. In an HTPC, if you wish to bit stream full definition audio via HDMI, all the devices in the chain need to support PAP, otherwise the audio is crippled by being down sampled. Should a device not support PAP, then the most you can expect out of a Bluray sound track is 16bit @ 48kHz. So, a Bluray movie with Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD as its audio tracks encoded at 24bit depth @ 96kHz will simply get down sampled without PAP. In essence, you don't get out what you have paid to listen to (Note - some people may argue the toss about not being able to distinguish the difference when listening, I don't wnat to start down this argument, I'm simply would like this functionality) I believe that only the latest PowerDVD software (and the software bundled with the Asus card) is capable of supporting PAP, but I don't know the position of the latest crop of video cards. As I want to pipe the output via HDMI to my Yamaha multi channel AV amp, so as it can decode the audio and feed the speakers, I would like the video card to be able to do this, otherwise I will need to think about an alternative route. As said previously, my information maybe a little out of date, but it certainly was the case late last year.
Some interesting news with regard to video cards allowing full bandwidth audio. It seems that both ATI 5xxx cards and the new 460 (and probably 450) support this feature, although for latest versions of PowerDVD and TMT currently do not support full audio output through the Nvidia card, although WinDVD and Direct Sound filters/reclock seem to allow bit streaming on the 460. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1262246&page=4
