Moving from Nvidia to ATI

WhiteChristmas

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Gents (and ladies)

Hopefully a quick question for you all.

I'm looking to upgrade from a Gainward G210 512mb to an ATI card, not sure of which one yet - however I was looking at either of these:

Sapphire HD 5450 1GB DDR3 HDMI DVI VGA Out PCI-E Low.. | Ebuyer.com

or

Sapphire Technology ATI Radeon 6570 HD 650MHz 1GB PCI-Express HDMI Ultimate (11191-27-20G) - dabs.com

The reason I'm looking at the upgrade is I use WMC7 and whenever I'm watching content (particularly HD) and bring up the guide the system gets a bit jerky. It's not a real issue, just something that bugs me so wondering if upgrading cards would help.

Reading through the forum I can see there are issues with ATI and S2 content (which is why I went for an Nvidia card originally), will this upgrade be more hassle than it's worth?

Cheers for your help
 
That is a very poor card which will struggle with most basic things. The 6570 would of been a much better card, especially if you decided to use any post processing with MadVR.

The 520 will have problems due to the bandwidth limits and the number of shaders. The best thing about it is it has the latest video decoding engine but everything else is crap. It's nVidia's lowest end card for a reason.

The GT640 is fairly decent but even that isn't perfect. I wanted a DDR5 version of that but so far there aren't any.

I would return that card and get something better.
 
According to this review, the GT 520 fell over badly in the deinterlacing tests, which could be an issue if, say, you're using WMC to watch/record OTA TV.

The review concludes you'd be best off with a GT 430 (nVidia) or a 6570 (AMD) for HTPC use, although it's a little out of date now and you'd probably want the GT 640 over the GT 430 for instance.
 
Thanks for the response - I didn't think anyone was going to reply after 70 approx views ;)

Surely the 520 (1gb) can't be any worse than the g210 (512mb) I currently have in the system - and I would say that the g210 is absolutely fine other than the jerkyness I mentioned when you are watching HD content and bring up the guide. It was only £29 and it's not like I do any gaming.

I would have gone with an ATI card but there are recent posts on the forum about Catalyst drivers and jerkyness/jaggies on the HD channels. Just didn't want to take the risk and have the wife upset :)

Thanks again for the response, I will let you know how I get on.

Chris
 
Surely the 520 (1gb) can't be any worse than the g210 (512mb) I currently have in the system - and I would say that the g210 is absolutely fine other than the jerkyness I mentioned when you are watching HD content and bring up the guide. It was only £29 and it's not like I do any gaming.

I would have gone with an ATI card but there are recent posts on the forum about Catalyst drivers and jerkyness/jaggies on the HD channels. Just didn't want to take the risk and have the wife upset :)

Thanks again for the response, I will let you know how I get on.

Chris
You might as well try it and see now you've ordered the card, but "when you are watching HD content and bring up the guide" suggests to me that you'll be watching interlaced h.264 content (broadcast HD TV), which is exactly where the GT 520 might be expected to struggle. I'm only going by what I've read online though, I haven't used the card personally.

If it works out OK for you, all well and good (give it a good workout while you're within the 7-working-day DSR return period), but if not, you can pick up something significantly better for just £10-20 more, which should be able to handle more or less anything you throw at it. :)
 
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FWIW I run a passive cooled ATi 4550 with Windows 7 Media Centre - it does HD from sat and SD from freeview without much drama - scaled to 1080p. I rolled back to catalyst 11.4 when there were problems with DVB-S2 macroblocking in a later release but otherwise its OK.
I have had issues with HDMI handshaking with my amp so it connects direct to the TV and my card is too old for HD Audio - but as it's a telly only box that doesn't matter to me.
 
Well you'll be pleased to hear that I put the new card in and the annoying judder when bringing up the guide (when HD content is playing) has gone :thumbsup: I also tested it by playing some MKVs and DVDs and there are no issues (not yet anyway).

Thanks for everyone's responses.

Chris
 

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