Radeon 7000 or Geforce Mx420 DDR

[tuan121]

which of these cards for watching movies??? Gf does not play video games

 

[Rand]

If your not playing games then the R7000 is preferable.
Better DVD playback, and guaranteed reasonably good 2D quality will push it to the fore-front.

When gaming enters the equation a GF4 MX420 would certanly be a more powerful gaming board, but outside of gaming the R7000 is slightly better in most respects. The fact that it should be cheaper is a nice addition also.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yup, but there's no need to get a GF4MX420 DDR as it's 64bit DDR which is only as fast as 128bit SDR! If gaming was a concern then you should find a Rad8500LE hardly costs much more and is a world apart in 3D. In any case, if you go Radeon watch out for non-ATI Radeons as they often skimp on things which can effect image quality and dual display as well as 3D perf.

The GF4MX cards do have DVD decoding hw, the Radeons are perhaps a TINY bit better for DVD playback but you are talking tiny diffs, since the Rad7000 is cheaper that would make it a better buy. In any case if your CPU is faster than 600mhz then hw decoding is pretty pointless anyway. The only gfx cards which really enhance the DVD playback (or any video) are the Rad9000, Rad9000pro and Rad9700 which all use DX8 hw functions to enhance the video and reduce MPEG artifacts. Rad9000 are pretty cheap but still very new, in a few weeks prices should drop a bit further. I haven't had this all confirmed by independent reviews yet though, but it is official stuff.

 

[BFG10K]

The Radeon generally edges the GeForce boards in DVD quality although from personal experience my GF4 Ti4600 looks just as good as my Radeon and it doesn't stutter when moving the mouse across the screen or when bringing up menu items while the movie is playing. Also the GF4 MXs have even better DVD quality than regular GF4s.

The general consensus is to get the Radeon but I have to break the tradition and recommend a GF4 from personal experience and comparisons.

 

[BFG10K]

The GF4MX cards do have DVD decoding hw,

All Radeon and GeForce class boards have hardware DVD decoding.