HTPC setup for some gaming with Virtu MVP

Salted11

Honorable
Feb 20, 2013
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10,510
I'm upgrading my HTPC with an ASUS P8Z77-V Pro mobo, Intel i5 3570K CPU and 16Gb RAM. This HTPC has been the centre of my living room entertainment, watching movies, TV shows and the like.

I also play some games on the big screen, GPU is GTX 560 Ti. Sound is via my Onkyo amplifier, and my sound card is an Auzentech X-Fi hometheater to deliver full lossless Blu-ray sound (via PowerDVD) and also for Dolby Digital Live to enable video game surround.

With the new components, I'm intrigued with the potential for minimizing PC noise when I'm watching movies and doing routine computing, while being able to engage the full power of the GPU for gaming. To do this, it seems I would need to use Virtu MVP in i-mode, allowing the GPU to be disengaged during "low-impact computing."

I've tried looking for benchmarks to confirm that my gaming experience won't overly suffer (I'm happy for a minor frame rate loss as a trade off, but am not interested in halving the frame rates I currently enjoy.) The only study that I found is here: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index. [...] mitstart=1

I'm interested in anyone else's experience and/or feedback on the present (2013) state of Virtu MVP. My present plan for set-up is as follows:

Video output in i-mode, video cable from mobo DVI/HDMI cable to X-Fi soundcard, HDMI out to Onkyo. Onkyo video out to sound.

If Virtu MVP does not work out, or I hear otherwise from this forum, the alternative is d-mode, GPU to X-Fi, then HDMI to Onkyo.

Thanks for your time.