Building a HTPC - Need Advice

[Wolfshadw]

I'm pretty sure she did repost in the New Build Forum (though I can't find it anymore) and I thought she did get the help she needed.

-Wolf sends

 

[rwpritchett]

Yeah, here it is.

- rwp receives LOL

 

[soundguruman]

The minimum card recommended by engineer at XFX for a home theater was 5670.
I was going with a 5870, but now I'm going to try them both side by side.
Since I am using the PC for Blu ray, streaming video, cable TV, satellite TV, photo editing, CAD, high res scanning negatives, photos,
and I want to use the desktop computer and play HD movies at the same time, on two screens, I see nothing wrong with a quad core processor. In fact it might be nice to have six cores.
As far as the video card goes, may the best one win. If the cheaper card does everything these people say it will do, so be it.
I really have my doubts about the little dinky card VS. the battleship.
When in doubt, build it stout.

 

[jaguarskx]

For the 4th time... read...

http/www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/htpc-graphics-cards.html

 

[soundguruman]

Despite what "experts" have written,
I have built the entire system, as above, and my conclusion is:
The 5870 video quality is superior, compared to the cheaper cards.
And I actually DID buy TWO cards, The cheap one, as recommended by "experts" and the expensive one, 5870. The 5870 blows the cheapo card away, both in video quality, and range of adjustments. It is MOST noticeable with streaming video programs.
Still photos?...About the same for both cards.
DVD playback? a bit better with the 5870. Cleaner picture for sure.
Streaming video? The 5870 is far, far superior.
Also the 5870 idles at 23 watts, making it run cooler than previous battleship video cards. The fan being adjustable speed, was no problem to set it into a quiet operational mode.
I will stick with the good card, and at $375, it was worth it-for the noticeable improvement in video quality.
I don't care what your "experts" have written. I can see the difference with my own two eyes.

I will also stick with my quad core processor. The quad core goes 50% during video playback, which would make a dual core go 100%. And that's what I don't want! The second a processor goes 100%...is when you loose your video quality.
I need cache memory to spare, that never goes 100%! Quads rule for home theater. The difference in price being so small between dual and quad, why bother with a dual core?

You can read reviews all day long, written by "experts"....but try actually building it, and compare the quality side by side. I DID!
You get what you pay for.

 

[94_xj]

For just an HTPC really these high end graphics cards are stupid. A 5870 to drive a TV at 1080p? Really? EVGA has their 780a mobo in Bstock dirt cheap and the integrated 8300m GPU with 16 stream processors is MORE than enough to do hardware decoding of bluray movies.

I've got an HTPC I just slapped together with a Phenom x3 a friend gave me for free and the 780a that I bought from EVGA and it's great.

Soundguruman, the difference you've seen from a 5870 for HD video rendering is in your head. The nvidia ION nettops can handle 720p video just fine on a dual core atom and what is basially a 9400gt.