Media Center - Graphics Card Problem

[Jeremiah]

Hey guys first post for me and i'm of course beginning with a problem.

So i have this neat little Media Center PC down in my living room with a 1080p Sharp HDTV. it's an "old" Dell PC with the following specs:

2GB DDR2 (should be 667 not sure right now)
160GB SATA Seagate HDD
Pentium 4 3Ghz with hyperthreading
Gainward Bliss 8400 GS 256MB
Creative Soundblaster 5.1 Digital

OS Vista Ultimate 32Bit

That should be all that matters for now. so now on to my problem.
i just upgraded the graphics card from a radeon x740xl 128MB to a
Gainward Bliss 8400 GS 256MB, or at least i thought i upgraded.

With the Radeon x740xl i had a score of 4.2 in the Vista Experience Index, now that i got the 8400GS i only score 3.3 points. what's wrong with that? i installed the latest drivers and before that i did a proper uninstall of everything ATI with driver cleaner.

Shouldn't every other Graphics Card be considered an upgrade from that horrible x740xl overheating deluxe edition?

For easier Comparsion i'll post the specs of both cards.

x740xl:
Core Clock: 425 MHz, Memory Clock: 450 MHz • 128DDR3(?) •
Memory Bus 128-bit(?)

8400GS:
Core Clock: 450MHz, Memory Clock: 400MHz • 256MB DDR2 •
Memory Bus 64-bit • HDCP

It's really hard to find infos on that x740xl since it's some crappy Medion spin off of an x700 as far as i know. The x740xl has 128bit mem-bus but that can't be such an advantage to the other specs can it?

Please somebody enlighten me what's wrong with my setup i just don't get it. Also excuse me for my poor English it's not my native language but i guess you will understand my point.

Thanks in advance,

Jeremiah

 

[englandr753]

Sorry to say but that 8400GS card is baseline for the 8 series and isnt what you need. I would recommend you get a 9600GT for that. I am using that card for my media center setup and its more than enough and is a good price. Will cost you maybe another 40-50 bucks but definitely worth it.

3 times the video card, or more...

 

[roadrunner197069]

I'd say the 64 bit bus vs the 128 bit is your problem.

 

[jitpublisher]

Basically you went from a very bottom of line card to another very bottom of the line card. Though the new card is "faster", there are other things to consider besides clock and memory speed. That 64bit buss is really, really poor.

 

[jedimasterben]

It should, however, be perfect for a media center PC. Neither card is good for any gaming (although Spore runs well on my girlfriend's 8400M GS laptop), but for HD video, it should be fine.