What's an inexpensive agp card good for HD Videos?

[Blurry]

Title says all
I'm trying to convert an old P4 Rig into an HTPC, but need a relatively inexpensive card to accelerate HD videos.
Thx

 

[TheOtherRizzo]

Check the new Nvidia support chart: http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

AGP will probably not work for you, don't know how the ATI cards are though as they have no chart for Avivo.

The only way to get good video decoding support ATM is with Vista and an 8500/8600 card. All other cards ignore deblocking, which is ok for bluray and HD-DVD but bad for AVC HDTV.

 

[Auric]

A 7300GT 128-bit or 7600GS will do with at least a 3GHz HT, preferably with SSE3 (and of course CyberLink decoder). But best to wait a few weeks for an X2400 as they promise to be far superior. The comparable 8000 series is not on offer in AGP and in any case fails to accelerate VC-1 which is important for some commerical discs.

 

[mruffin75]

Isn't there going to be AGP versions of the ATI Radeon 2400 and 2600?? They have the UVD which should be fine for HD playback..

 

[Rage3kMoiz]

The GeForce 6200 AGP will work very well for an HTPC. It's not much of a gamer, but you wouldn't need it for that anyways methinks. It's available for $40-$60 in most shops nowadays.