Competition for ati 4670 ?

[abhishekk89]

hi guys...

i'm looking to upgrade my 7600 GT.... since the pc in which it is installed will soon become a htpc...

i was looking for a graphics card below $70...

thought ati radeon 4670 suits my needs...

what do u think of this card ?? good enough for me ??

plz suggest any others if u feel it performs better for my budget...

requirements :
1. should be able to bit stream dts and dolby digital audio(along with others audio formats of course)...
2. do not want to buy a new psu...
3. wanna game in my 40" lcd tv at full hd resolution(i know this is too much of an ask but jus squeezing as much as possible from the money i pay )

and thought i'll go for the 1 GB version....

 

[daedalus685]

The 4670 can not bitstream.

The 5870, 5850, 5770, and 5750 are the only four out that can currently do this.

 

[abhishekk89]

can't it pass audio through the hdmi cable ?? u sure ?? coz the amd website says so..

 

[daedalus685]

Yes, it can pass audio, but it can not bitstream the audio. Bitstreaming was a new feature added in the 5000 series.

 

[abhishekk89]

i'm sorry guys but my budget has been reduced further...

now i'm only looking at 4350 or 4550.... plz suggest one of the cards... or any other card in this price range... my requirements remain the same.. except now that I've to strike off gaming due to these low budget cards..

 

[abhishekk89]

what's the difference between bit streaming and passing.. plz explain..

 

[daedalus685]

The 4670 suports LPCM audio. The card sends the sound uncompressed over the HDMI.

Bitstreaming gives a protected audio path for the reciever to decode. This is important for many heavily encripted sources. It usualyl gives better quality as well, depending on the reciever (unelss the source is in LPCM, which is very very unlikely). The reciever is usually much better at dealing with the audio than the card, thus the fuss about bitstream as it allows the decoding to be done on the reciever end. Of course this is assumign one is not using a very expensive audio card.