HD Graphics Card Dilemma

[Tank1980]

Evening again, hope you don’t mind my 2nd post in 2 days?

I have a huge dilemma as to what graphics card to use with my mobo - Gigabyte P35C-DS3R??

It’s the last piece of the puzzle and I am completely baffled by what to get, do I go with ATI, Gigabyte or Nvidia, PCI Express 2.0 x 16?? ah ah ah ah ah ah I just don’t know.

I have around £50 to spend and would like it to play blue ray @ 1080P with no problem, allow audio over HDMI, be HDCP compatible, it won’t be used for gaming?

Many thanks

Tank1980

 

[Theydon Bois]

I have a ATI 3470 256mb in my HTPC, and it handles everything I have thrown at it, and it cost £45 from scan.

Check Mickwalls HTPC build sticky at the top of this thread, and see which other cards people are using as well.

And I wouldnt worry about 2 posts in 2 days, some of us need to post once an hour, else the world seems at some inbalance.....

 

[EndlessWaves]

It's the last piece of the puzzle and I am completely baffled by what to get, do I go with ATI, Gigabyte or Nvidia, PCI Express 2.0 x 16?? ah ah ah ah ah ah I just don't know.

ATI and nVidia make the central GPU chips that are usually mentioned when discussing graphics cards, the Radeon HD 3450s and the Geforce 8500GTs. Other companies like Gigabyte, XFX, Asus and Powercolour mount these chips on the graphics cards and provide the supporting hardware like the memory chips. This usually only matters if you want unusual ports or especially quiet or powerful cooling systems.

Pretty much all graphics card are PCI-E (PCI Express) 16x these days, although do double-check to make sure you don't get a PCI or AGP one. 2.0 or not doesn't matter.

 

[daman2k]

i have the saphire 3650, does everything and can handle games at low res ie 1280x720 but thats not why i got it

 

[Tank1980]

Thanks guys for your posts, i like the look of the ATI 3470, will do a little more research but will probably go for that one

 

[EndlessWaves]

What's the difference between the 3450 and the 3470?

 

[Theydon Bois]

I googled this.....200Mhz apparently.

mine is a silent version as well, with a large heatsink so quiet.

 

[Obiit]

The extra 200mhz is worthwhile as i have a 3450 and it can struggle sometimes on very high bitrate video.