htpc Graphics card reviews

[patch1]

Where should I look for decent reviews of graphic cards for a htpc. Most of the reviews I find are written by keen gamers who don't seam to understand what is important.

For me the priorities are
1) Has to play the movies using gpu so I don't need to spend a fortune on the cpu. Nivida appear to do better at this:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1326499#post1326499
Yet it is almost never mentioned in the reviews and is not clear in the Wikipedia entries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureVideo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder

Frustrating as I recently bought a Radeon 4600 series which does not play about 30% of my higher definition rips, all of which are played by equivalent nivida cards.
Do we need to publish bench mark comparisons on doom9?

2) It should be quiet enough to not disturb the movie & ideally the room. Testing of this varies
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gt-220-review-test/3
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2962/galaxy_geforce_gt_220_1gb_video_card/index11.html

3) Power consumption should not force larger fans & power supply yet most are tested in high performance games machines with 1000W power supply and i7 processors.

Am I just looking in the wrong places?

[Jeff Flowerday]

My 4670 played every blu-ray, hd-dvd rip I made. DXVA on all of them. Not sure why you'd have problems.

The 5750 is the new HTPC darling. With the correct software it will bitstream the HD audio formats.

[Dr.Khron]

Am I just looking in the wrong places?

Yes. There are many sites devoted to HTPC stuff. You can get some pretty good advice on specific parts here, but its not really a focus.

I can't give you any links because my HTPC has always been my previous desktop; everytime I build a new godbox the old one gets handed-down to the living room.

[patch1]

My 4670 played every blu-ray, hd-dvd rip I made. DXVA on all of them. Not sure why you'd have problems.

The 5750 is the new HTPC darling. With the correct software it will bitstream the HD audio formats.

I thought the Radeon cards were good too from the reviews, which is why I got a:
HD2600XT for an old AGP computer running XP
HD 4650 on a pci express slot, again running Windows XP.

Unfortunately If you're just decoding H.264/VC-1 content from Blu-Ray then it shouldn't matter, because both ATI and Nvidia cards decode L4.1 just fine. But Nvidia cards support up to 16 ref frames allowing for decoding of just about all L5.1 x264 encodes, which ATI's cards can't do (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1326480#post1326480)
And apparently with 5870 card with Catalyst 9.10 beta. The fresh new cards still can't play 5.1 (http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=106911&STARTPAGE=4&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear&#lastunread)
I'm aware you can try and work around it, but the solution are fare from elegant see (http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/) or here (http://zachsaw.blogspot.com/2009/08/watching-hd-video-in-mpc-hc-dxva-for.html)

ATI response 01/15/2009 09:03 PM
The Bluray spec is 4 reference frames at 1920 x 1080, thats the most likely maximum content to be played back by 99.9% of people. All the specs of the cards only mention bluray playback at 1080P being accelerated.

Whilst some people may want beyond bluray quality its not supported. (http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=106911&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear)

But compression beyond L4.1 is not at all uncommon, it effects about 30% of my x264 encodes. An area where the nivida cards do much better. I suspect why tetsuo55 recommended a nivida (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123537&page=491) card.

BTW I opened this thread, not to bash ATI, but to find out if the video decoding capabilities of various video cards / operating systems are documented anywhere, so I can make more informed decisions in the future. Would be good if this information was included in most reviews, perhaps then ATI would improve their driver capabilities.

Instead of testing htpc cards in games machines playing a variety of games poorly, I would like to see how the cards perform with a middle and low end cpu playing a variety of movie sequences such as the BBC Planet Earth: From Pole to Pole sample (mirror). Contains the infamous waterfall and birds flyby scenes (http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/). Re-encoding this at a variety of resolutions / complexities then testing a variety of cards (& operating systems if that makes a difference).

[littleD]

I think you need just 9400 GS. The same chip is in the ION platform, so its good recommendation. Apart from all stuff that actually nvidia has in their cards, this particular one has VP3 engine, and onboard audio (streaming through HDMI).
Alternatively you could try GT 210/220 but i really didnt see any serious reviews.
Ati 4xxx series arent bad if you look for cheaper, a liitle bit more powerful or energy efficient cards.

[Jeff Flowerday]

No wonder I don't see issues, everything I play is <= 4.1

I'm now on board with you, ATI needs to address this.

[DrNein]

Yet the only "sources" with nominally higher levels are merely re-encoded BD with drastically reduced bitrates and quality so the supposed limitation is red herring.

Maybe if working with some experimental UHD stuff such hardware is required but otherwise let's not get hung up on a "higher version" with no practical benefit.

[patch1]

Yet the only "sources" with nominally higher levels are merely re-encoded BD with drastically reduced bitrates and quality so the supposed limitation is red herring.
...
no practical benefit.

Sounds like the line ATI took.

Unfortunately it misses the point in several ways.
1) This thread way started to find out if this information was available in reviews somewhere so users could consider (with what ever level of importance they choose) prior to purchasing. For a card purchased to play movies, the range of movie formats it supports (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264) is one of the factors which should be considered.

2) A significant portion of media is encoded this way. Whether it improves the perceived image quality for a given file size can be separately argued, but it definitely occurs and is not uncommon.

3) My issue with ATI is not that there is a limited amount they are prepared to do, or even commit to do in the future. The bit I object to is they prevent others doing it also. Effectively trying to tell me what is important for me.
If I buy nivida it will do in the future whatever nivida & the wider open source community can get it to do.
If I buy ATI it will do what ever ATI can see money in coding (which will be nothing new when the card I bought reaches the end of it's marketing life). Which makes it cheaper for me to buy a navida card than buy a commercial media player supporting ATI decoding of all my videos.

[Blue_MiSfit]

At this point in time, I think an nVidia card or integrated GPU is the way to go for an HTPC - provided you're doing more than just watching BluRay discs. CUDA and better support for "typical" x264 backups are a nice bonus to have.

That being said, it really doesn't matter. A fast dual core or any quad core can handle everything in software... so who cares ;)

I'd say pick up one of those new Athlon II X4 CPUs, load up ffmpeg-mt in ffdshow, or DivX h.264, and rock 'n' roll! Let the GPU do what it's supposed to do - render and present the damn video, not turn its hair gray decoding it!!! :devil:

~MiSfit

[wayland]

personally i would rather use a 4550 and be able to output 5.1 lpcm over hdmi (or up to 7.1) rather than being able to play L5.1 with dxva/cuda but then the cpu in my htpc is a q6600 so software decoding isnt a problem. supppose owners of recent nvidia cards might be tempted to go the xonar/auzentech route if they want hdmi audio but compared to the price of low/mid range ati cards it doesnt seem worth it, the 4550 cost me £30 and i can probably replace it with a 5550 once they are out and will have spent less than if i got a dedicated soundcard

[Przemek_Sperling]

Ditto. ATI 4350/4550 cards have one more advantage - low power consumption, they need mere 5W/25W (idle/stress) which means that they can be passively cooled and/or low profile. Anyway I use my Gigabyte ATI Radeon 4550 (passively cooled) and it is warm in stress. I can touch the radiator without any problems. I believe that ATI 5550-like will be even colder because of the 40nm process production. I use Mirillis Splash Player Lite for playing H.264 files/streams (mkv, mp4 containers and DVB-T TV). The consumption of total power needed by my computer when decoding H.264 is visibly lower when the material is GPU decoded.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yeah, that's a really good point :) Multichannel LPCM over HDMI is good stuff :)

Don't recent nVidia cards do that as well??

~MiSfit

[littleD]

Only for GT 210/220 i believe.

[Cyber-Mav]

also new nvidia gt 210, 220 and 240 have VP4, the 4th generation purevideo decoder which provides an even greater advantage for htpc use.

[Przemek_Sperling]

As well as GT 205 and GT 310 http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_310_us.html monsters :devil:

[patch1]

personally i would rather use a 4550 and be able to output 5.1 lpcm over hdmi (or up to 7.1) rather than being able to play L5.1 with dxva/cuda

I agree benchmarks / review which list the audio standards supported as well as the video standards would be good. Also if comercial software is required for playback then that cost need to be listed / added to the graphics card purchase cost.

A table listing video & audio standards supported per graphics card & software player, on low and high end CPU would be ideal

This review is a step in that direction http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=407&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=0