Need help choosing between Nvidia 9500GT and Radeon 3650 HD

[seth1]

Hi,

I'm looking for a video card for the sole purpose of hooking the PC to a FULL HD LCD TV and watching HD movies etc..

I've been recommended the 9500GT over the 3650HD, but after doing some research on Google I'm really not sure anymore.

The 3650 comes with 512MB GDDR3 whereas the 9500GT only comes with 256MB of DDR3 of 512MB of DDR2. Also, the 3650 supports DirectX 10.1 whereas 9500GT only supports DirectX 10 (Not sure how much effect that has on playing HD movies, and i don't use the Pc for gaming).

Now I understand (but not totally sure) that the 9500GT supports a standard called VC1 and full H.264 hardware decode that i haven't seen mentioned on 3650 specs... Also there is a standard called VP2/VP3 which i haven't been able to determine which of the two cards supports.

So i would really appreciate it if people here whom i guess know all this stuff could advise me on which card is more suitable for me.

Thanks!

 

[SunnyD]

If all you're doing is watching movies - pick whichever is cheaper. The 3650 is no slouch and is actually a halfway decent video card for moderate gaming. I'm sure the 9500GT is equally as charming, but it's new enough there's few reviews. The 3650 probably will have better picture quality.

Log and short of it - since it's for video, pick whichever is cheaper.

 

[seth1]

Thanks Sunny,

Do you happen to know which of the two cards supports VC1/H264/VP2,3?

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: seth1
Thanks Sunny,

Do you happen to know which of the two cards supports VC1/H264/VP2,3?

ATI 3600 series

# Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats
* High definition (HD) playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats
# Hardware MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX video decode acceleration
* Motion compensation and IDCT
# ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
* Color space conversion
* Chroma subsampling format conversion
* Horizontal and vertical scaling
* Gamma correction
* Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
* De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
* Detail enhancement
* Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
* Bad edit correction
...
* MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding

The 9500GT only specifies H.264, though I'm sure it supports the other codecs. Only catch may be is that you might have to buy their PureVideo player from them to enable it.

 

[wolf2009]

For gaming , 9500gt is better . For everything else both will be good .

And both support decoding of VC-1 , H,264.

 

[ss284]

If you arent going to play games, get the 3450. More than enough for any HTPC usage. I don't believe the nvidia series gpus support audio over HDMI.

 

[seth1]

ss284: its does support audio over HDMI:

http://arstechnica.com/journal...-cards-hit-the-streets

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: wolf2009
For gaming, 9500gt is better. For everything else both will be good .

And both support decoding of VC-1 , H,264.

Be a little careful with blanket statements, I seriously doubt that this EVGA 9500GT with GDDR2 is going to be good for games at all.

 

[seth1]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
The 3650 probably will have better picture quality.
.

Sunny, what do you base this statement on?

If the picture quality is better then i will go for the Radeon.

Other than that the only other thing I will consider is that the 9500GT comes with 1GB DDR2, and the Radeon with 512MB of DDR3. what are the advantages of each option?

 

[Insomniator]

The video memory on either really doesn't matter. Video quality is probably the same, and the 3650 will do audio through HDMI which the Nvidia card will not.

Get whatever is cheaper unless the audio hdmi is imortant to you.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Insomniator
the 3650 will do audio through HDMI which the Nvidia card will not.

That is not true, unless the card manufacturer deviated quite a bit from the Nvidia reference design. IIRC all 9xxx series cards support audio through HDMI, using a pass-through jumper from your motherboard's SPDIF-out headers. I've personally tested this on various cards using various 9xxx series GPUs and they have all worked, even through both DVI ports (tested one at a time... dunno if they'll output both at the same time). A special adaptor is needed that is wired properly to provide the audio.

 

[Insomniator]

ahh sorry was this ever true though? I definitely remember this being an advantage for ATI cards recently..

 

[Denithor]

Picture quality has been equal for quite a while now, ATi had the edge back in the days of the x18/19 series versus the Geforce 7 cards. But since the 8 series they've been equal.

And you should also consider this really hot deal:

EVGA 8800GS $110FS - $16IR (coupon code EMCAJAFAD) - $30MIR = $64 shipped AR

This is a near-silent card that is actually fairly good for gaming and will handle all your video work easily. Check out the review at techpowerup.