The big question: ATi or nVidia ?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › The big question: ATi or nVidia ?

buzzy

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#32826 24-Apr-2009 14:08

Hey all,

I'm looking at upgrading my HTPC system. As far as the CPU goes, AMD and Intel seem much of a muchness: $400 will get you a decent dual core from either vendor, or slightly newer triple core from AMD, or a slightly slower quad core Intel.

The biq question is: ATi or nVidia? I know ATi had some driver issues recently; is anyone having success with Freeview|HD and an ATi card? The HTPC will be used primarily for Freeview; the PS3 will probably do most of the BluRay playback for the forseeable future.

I'm thinking an ATi 4650 or nVidia 9500GT. Both are in the $150 to $200 range. Are these adequate or do I need a better card to handle the HD decoding work?

Cheers!
Buzzy

eXDee

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#209036 24-Apr-2009 14:27

Nvidia, because their track record has been better than ATI though both solutions will work.
You also get the option of CUDA if for some strange reason you decided to use CoreAVC and they actually fixed all the bugs in it.

garvani

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#209059 24-Apr-2009 16:57

It depends entirely on you! Im an ati fanboy. There cards are rock solid, and are a far better price point than nvidia. I would go with ATI personally. Any of the HD series will do hardware decoding so the cuda statement is irrelevant. I have my 4850 hardware decoding nicely..

heavenlywild

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#209061 24-Apr-2009 17:27

I have used both in notebook and desktop format.

I find performance-wise, both are pretty equal.

In terms of price, I agree with the above, ATI is better value for money.

In terms of noise / heat, ATI wins hands down!

I have had compatibility issues with nVidia cards before on my desktop but never with ATI.

richms

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#209112 24-Apr-2009 23:03

nvidia - it just works with the powerdvd codec - I had no end of probs with ati drivers not working on some channels - put in a 8500 nvidia and its smooth as silk and just went.

Richard rich.ms

vexxxboy

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#209116 24-Apr-2009 23:24

i have the 9500gt and i only paid $130 and $10 of that was delivery so they are cheap and i have had no problems with it would recommend it

Common sense is not as common as you think.

mcraenz

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#209188 25-Apr-2009 11:13

You need a card that will do NZ Freeview HD hardware decoding, look around these or other NZ forums and choose the card that has the best track record for decoding Freeview HD. A manufacture might absolutely smash it's competitor for all sorts of reasons but just focus on you're main goal, decoding Freeview HD. I think the choice will be obvious.

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eXDee

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#209314 25-Apr-2009 20:32

garvani: It depends entirely on you! Im an ati fanboy. There cards are rock solid, and are a far better price point than nvidia. I would go with ATI personally. Any of the HD series will do hardware decoding so the cuda statement is irrelevant. I have my 4850 hardware decoding nicely..

I have a HD4850 in the main rig, its an excellent card and it too does hardware decoding nicely. However Nvidia simply as mentioned works straight away with pretty much any recent driver, in fact the one off the disk would work too.

The CUDA statement was regarding CoreAVC and other future codecs that decide to use this to accelerate, which may or may not work out better than DXVA.

I think being a fanboy of any brand is rather pointless, i go for whatever is the best solution and bang for buck at the time.

buzzy

217 posts

Master Geek
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#209432 26-Apr-2009 10:58

mcraenz: You need a card that will do NZ Freeview HD hardware decoding, look around these or other NZ forums and choose the card that has the best track record for decoding Freeview HD. A manufacture might absolutely smash it's competitor for all sorts of reasons but just focus on you're main goal, decoding Freeview HD. I think the choice will be obvious.

As I'd said in the original question, the card will be primarily used for Freeview.

No offense, but the choice wasn't obvious. If it was, I wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. As it turns out, there are respondents from both camps, indicating that the ATi driver issues have been solved and that either card would be acceptable.

Cheers
Buzzy

buzzy

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Master Geek
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#209433 26-Apr-2009 11:02

Thanks for the responses everyone. It looks like either card will work; I suspect I'll end up matching it to the motherboard chipset vendor, which leads me on another bunch of research...

Cheers
Buzzy

mcraenz

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#209448 26-Apr-2009 12:26

No. No offense to you! :) I guess I was just trying to say, without starting an ati vs nvidia flame war, look at all the threads where people have had issues with ati and freeview, and yes many threads where people have confirmed that ati is now working yet the debate continues; there has never been any debate with nvidia and freeview. it just works! :-)

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kiwijunglist

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#209744 27-Apr-2009 13:51

i had an 8500gt and had problems with freeview hd dxva, now back to onboard ati hd3200 and working fine. I would still recommend going for nvidia as people seem to have less problems, but i think both will be fine, just be prepared to do a lot of trouble shooting if making an HTPC as it takes a while to get everything working perfectly. one tip is make backups/ghosts of your install. install + setup everything except for mediaportal/display driver/codecs then do a ghost. codecs/mp/dispaly driver always change, the other drivers you can leave unchanged.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.