Suggestions on the ATI HD 3850 3870 4850

GeezerMan

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Jan 28, 2005
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The Egg has several deals going on Asus cards now.
ASUS EAH3850/G/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 69.38 shipped AR
ASUS EAH4850/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 157.99 shipped AR
ASUS EAH3870 TOP/G/HTDI/512M/A Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 108.96 shipped AR

Suggestions please. To give you an idea, I'm pretty happy with the 8600GT performance wise, but it would bog down a bit on BF2 on high settings,
so a bit of a performance increase would be nice. I would like to get HDMI video and audio out to the TV.
Looks like ATI is the way to go for HDTV use. I think the 4850 would be wasted on me.
Looks like the the 3850 fits the bill, but the 3870 is only 40.00 more. Thanks

HD 3850

HD 3870


HD 4850





 

Sylvanas

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Jan 20, 2004
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What res do you play at and what games? The 4850 will blow away the performance of a 8600GT and is the best fit if you intend to play most modern titles at 1680x1050 4x/8xAA. Both the 3850 and 3870 are also going to be alot faster than your current card so either will be a good choice. If you intend to OC, most 3850's can reach 3870 core speeds so you get that performance for free. It really depends on the games you want to play and settings- if it is just BF2 then a 3850 will be the best choice.
 

GeezerMan

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My Sony is a 1080P TV, so 1920×1080. Maybe the 4850 would be better for the higher resolution this TV will display. Thanks
 

Sylvanas

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Well definitely the 4850 would chew through 1920×1080 but if you are happy with a 8600GT's performance at that resolution then you can expect a 3850/3870 to be at least double that.
 

GeezerMan

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Thanks Sylvanas. I ordered an ASUS EAH3870 TOP/G/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 3870 512MB GDDR4. Since I'm much more a HD user, and a little bit of gaming ( like an hour a week) this should work well. From what I read over at AVS forum, I think ATI has less problems with TV connection with HDMI. Zipzoomfly has this Asus 3870 for 99.00 AR, free shipping.
They also have the 3850 for 58.00 AR, free shipping. Though both cards show out of stock right now.
 

GeezerMan

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Link

ATI specs for the 3870 show 5.1 audio.
I don't know if it can do 7.1, but 5.1 is good enough for me
The bad thing about PC audio, like when using PowerDVD and playing a Bluray or HD DVD movie, is that Powerdvd will only pass the core audio, and not the extended HD audio due to their concerns of a secure audio path.
 

chizow

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Originally posted by: GeezerMan
Link

ATI specs for the 3870 show 5.1 audio.
I don't know if it can do 7.1, but 5.1 is good enough for me
The bad thing about PC audio, like when using PowerDVD and playing a Bluray or HD DVD movie, is that Powerdvd will only pass the core audio, and not the extended HD audio due to their concerns of a secure audio path.

Are you basing this on your experiences with the 3870? The onboard audio codec that passes audio via HDMI only supports standard AC3/DD/DTS 5.1. Its not a PowerDVD limitation as you can get lossless 7.1 over analog or 8ch LPCM over HDMI only with solutions that support it with the retail Ultra version. I fully expect lossless/uncompressed bitstreams over HDMI to be supported as well once we see some products that support it.
 

GeezerMan

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No, I'm going by what I read over at AVS forum a few months ago. PowerDVD was supposed to be working on a solution. Maybe they have one now?
It was a DRM issue. I'm not too upset about not having HD audio anyway, I'm not sure if I could hear the difference.
But, my audio card has nice DACs, Creative Elite Pro, I could use the analog out of the Creative to analog in on the receiver, if I had a software to decode HD audio
 

chizow

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Originally posted by: GeezerMan
No, I'm going by what I read over at AVS forum a few months ago. PowerDVD was supposed to be working on a solution. Maybe they have one now?
It was a DRM issue. I'm not too upset about not having HD audio anyway, I'm not sure if I could hear the difference.
But, my audio card has nice DACs, Creative Elite Pro, I could use the analog out of the Creative to analog in on the receiver, if I had a software to decode HD audio
PowerDVD has supported the HD formats over analog as long as I've had the full retail version, so at least 4 months now. If you click information and go into settings it tells you the exact bitrate, format and sampling rate. If you have the retail version of PowerDVD you should definitely be looking to output over analog, especially with that sound card.

The nice thing about BluRay/HD-DVD is that you can change the audio stream on-the-fly without going to the main menu so you should absolutely be able to hear the difference; I know I can. If you were outputting via s/pdif or digital over HDMI however, you would still need to stop the movie and change your output settings in PowerDVD, but if you output over analog and then change between DD/DTS 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD or DTS-MA you should notice a substantial difference.
 

GeezerMan

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link

One of the threads in AVS forum, said downsampling would still be in PowerDVD version 8



I just found this link that explains Cyberlink fixed the problem
with Realtek audio

Link


It's hard to keep up with what is going on.

I'm using PowerDVD ultra 7.3, since it's the last one that supports HD DVD
 

GeezerMan

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Looks like the Radeon 4850/4870 are the ones that support HD audio, and not the 3870.
So, if I want HD audio, I would need a software solution to decode HD audio and send it to my Creative Elite Pro to output via analog
I don't think there is any updates for Powerdvd Ultra 7.3 to allow true HD audio output, or I could get the PowerDVD 8


I'm getting dizzy now. I need to rest
 

GeezerMan

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This is interesting. A posting ( July 2008) in this thread over at AVS says PowerDVD still downsamples HD audio. This is confusing.

Link
 

chizow

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I'll take a look later at that thread, but I'm pretty sure PDVD shows 24-bit output. I'd also like to see what sound solutions these people are using. I do know PDVD has always sampled at 48kHz for me, but after some quick research I found out it was because there were only 2-3 Bluray's that were 24/96, Dave Matthew's Band Live and some documentaries I believe.
 

GeezerMan

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I poked around the AVS forum quite a bit last night, and the guys in the know say that Powerdvd still downsamples. Some say the Arcsoft media player does not downsample.
One posting in another forum said PowerDVD will show whatever audio format is playing, like HD, but the downsampling still takes place.