Which card to choose for this HTPC?

Titan2k

Junior Member
Feb 9, 2004
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It seems the more information I find the further away from picking a card I am. I am picking components for an HTPC. This HTPC will be used for HD video (digital cable, analog cable, and possibly Blueray movies), as a PVR, some 3D design using Blender, and for some games (spore, World of Warcraft, nothing bleeding edge). If all works out as planned it will run MythTV on Ubuntu with Windows XP as another boot option for gaming. My intent is to keep this computer quiet so I'm willing to spend a little more on quality components.

The components I have already chosen are an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale and Sonata Designer 500. It will have 4 GB of decent RAM and a good high speed harddrive.

The state of the video card industry is rather confusing at the moment. In the past NVidia has had far superior linux drivers but ATI is supposedly coming out with some new open source drivers and/or really kickass proprietary drivers. ATI's 4000 series card, from what I've heard, just blow away NVidia's latest cards but the 4000 series cards are only gaming cards. I've seen a few places mention that ATI also has higher picture quality but lower frame rates as well as lower power/performance ratio.

What would you suggest and why?

Any clarity on the situation is greatly appreciated.
 

Sylvanas

Diamond Member
Jan 20, 2004
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Well how much do you want to spend on a card? On the cheaper end of things you could be looking at something like a 3870 and on the High end a 4850 (but it'll be overkill for what you want to do). A 3870 will play the games you mentioned respectably, but if you do have the budget for a 4850 that would be a more future proof solution. If you wanted to use the card just for the HTPC I'd be saying a 3450 but that is not going to be playing those games very well.
 

bryanW1995

Lifer
May 22, 2007
11,144
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Originally posted by: angry hampster
Originally posted by: Janooo
Here is a noise free card.

That's a nice option, but it's not available yet.


OP: Check out this 4850 with a Zalman VF1000 sitting on it for $160:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814127370

That should play anything you throw at it for a while, and stay quiet and cool at the same time.

+1

4850 is a much better card than 3870. having said that, you should be able to pick up a 3870 for ~ $90-$100 these days and it will probably do what you want for now.
 

Titan2k

Junior Member
Feb 9, 2004
22
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Looking at the 4850 and 3870 on Newegg it seems like they are both hot running cards. Even if the card is fine I'm concerned the added heat load will make the other fans in the computer scale up to meet the load. I'd also like to try and avoid double decker cards.

Is there any real perceivable difference between the visual quality of ATI and NVidia cards?

At what point did the ATI linux drivers become on par with NVidia's?
 

Titan2k

Junior Member
Feb 9, 2004
22
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Slugbait, I hadn't but this was meant to be a generic HTPC. I will move enough times with this computer that I can't design it for a specific location. I was just hoping to get the basics down (CPU, mobo, graphics card, HDD, RAM) and work on the rest over the next few months. While we're on the topic though, do they make dual input (both analog and digital) cards that work well in linux with MythTV?
 

onedestinazn2

Member
Jun 9, 2008
46
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from my experience ati cards have usually looked better than their nvidia counterparts i currently have a visiontek 4850 and its running quiet and cool without an aftermarket fan
 

Canai

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2006
8,016
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My vote goes to an X1900 AIW if you can find one. I was running mine O/C'd for gaming for ~2 years, and it now resides in my parents' HTPC. The large number of AV I/O options and connectors really make it a winner, and it's fast enough to play a bit of games on too.