Good card for full h264 decoding

[africamagical]

I have had enough of this x1900 and its drivers on my machine, I am looking for a new card that has full h.264 decoding support, I really only use the machine to playback movies on my projector and that ati has always had a slight screen tear in fast motion scenes.
I am leaning towards nvidia just because this Catalyst control suite is not working out so well.
newegg is practically giving away 8600 gts's and I ve heard they do hardware decoding, it would be a downgrade I know, but i really don't game on that machine.


what card should I get?
thanks for the input

 

[AKM880]

Yes the 8600GT does do H.264 encoding, but is a older card. ATI cards do great H.264 encoding, I have one in my HTPC rig. Works fine but its a matter of finding right drivers. The X1900 doesn't do encoding very well, the cards that did H.264/VC-1 was starting with the HD2k-HD3k and up series of ATI video cards. All of them has this "UVD" technology except for a version of the 2900XT.

I personally have a 8400GS which is a horrible gaming card, but a nice HTPC DXVA card. It can be comparable the 8600GT in terms of the technology used to decode the videos. Nvidia uses PureVideo while ATI uses AVIVO. I personally never really liked the CCC all that much, but I guess its easier the more you use it. If you really don't game go for a card like the 9400GT, or HD4550 from ATI. The 9400GT was a great little HTPC card, since my friend's HTPC has one in it. Should do VC-1/H.264 encoding.

What program are you plannin to use for these H.264 playback? I personally use MPC-HC and find it does DXVA quite well. Altho PowerDVD 9 also takes advantage of AVIVO and PureVideo.

 

[rewindlabs]

Hi Africanmagical...if you where planning on getting rid of that x1900 i would definitely be interested in it...i could really use a light graphics card for my cheap p4 rig...this would be perfect...pm me if you care to 😀

 

[Guest]

HD 2400 - older but has hardware 264 decoder and 5.1 built-in for audio over HDMI.
And it's cheap. Very cheap.

 

[AKM880]

The HD2400 does have a H.264 decoder but since its a older card, I suggest the 3450. It has UVD + if I'm not mistaken.

 

[jaguarskx]

I would get a HD 4550 or HD 4650.

 

[AKM880]

Yes those two video cards are good choices for H.264 decoding but a 3450 could easily do it. Or should atleast 😛