opinions on comparison please

[quartz0]

upgrading so i can play 1080 mkv's smoothly


geforce 7600GS (agp - what i currently have)
8600GS (pci-e potential)
AMD llano A8-3850 (a6-3650 ?) integrated radeon hd 6550
i3-2100 (2120 ?) integrated gfx
geforce GT 440 (pci-e potential)

(some of those were just ebaying 'silent nvidia')

I've seen integrated should be enough for 1080 so I may as well blast for the fastest on that for now, until a pci-e

i'm guessing the 440 might be the fastest, with say 50/100 marks
and the 7600GS I have now at say 10/100
with the integrateds at 25/100 ?



ive got this http://www.zdnet.de/i/story_media/41551750/nvidia_geforce-gt520-performance-v6.jpg for basic comparison

from some google benchmarks, would i be right saying the intels strength is cpu crunching (eg converting video file), the amd strength is the visuals (eg displaying video file) in which case generally speaking I'd lean towards AMD

 

[fffblackmage]

I don't understand. Your current have an old rig that has an agp slot? Does it also have a PCIe slot?

If you do have a PCIe slot, then just any modern low-end graphics card can handle hardware accelerated h264 decoding. However, I had issues in the past with using the gpu for video decoding. It just doesn't always work. Lately, I haven't had that problem, but you just need to be aware that it could be an issue. You'll definitely see issues if you're trying to stream netflix and using the gpu for video decoding.

If you have to upgrade the cpu and mobo, then my first choice is probably something like a G530 + H61/H67 mobo. This should be able to handle all 1080p video.

 

[Concillian]

displaying 1080p neither is really better than another. No AGP card will be able to do what you want to do. 1080P needs some specialized decompression. This function didn't exist in AGP times, so none of those cards have it. Everything modern, even the lowest end IGP will have that functionality, since it's now pretty standard.

Higher end video cards or cards that go into PCIe slots are more for gaming. If you're not playing 3D games, then you don't need anything but the GPU that's incorporated into most CPUs these days.

Generally you can choose to buy an i3 or A6 / A8 and they will do what you want, but you need a new motherboard for them, and you'll need RAM that fits the new motherboard (DDR3). Generally this will cost ~$200 or so.

 

[quartz0]

at the moment i'm running a kt600 chipset with an athlon xp3000+, (a couple of generations up from a duron) about a 6 years old system, only agp, no pci-e. i just upgraded from a geforce 3, to a geforce 7600 (the fastest silent agp card i could find which wasn't a complete overhaul). i figure its a good time to get up to date. tbh the a6 or a8 is looking fairly promising, and that also has pci-e for the future if we get to 2160p mkv's (or whatever it is. by that time we'll have pci-e2...or something. but that's a different story )