Best PCI-E X16 Card for around $150

What is the best card for around that money that will be great for media center pc watching movies and such on a plasma display?? I have found a few that I am going to buy but I just cant pull the trigger yet.


FYI- I like to shop NewEgg. 8)

Sorry I forgot to mention it HAD to be a Radeon. No geforce allowed =o)

What do you think about a 1950xt instead of the 8500?

Maybe try the x16xx series. by ati.

Yes, since you for some odd reason don't want a Nvidia card :? , I would strongly recommend you wait until ATI's new midrange cards come out. I have heard good things about their power consumption and power.

Then wait for these. Should be out soon.



How soon will they be out?

Yes all X1950 cards are loud... except maybe for the water cooled one

July I think...

but seriously the reason you gave not having a Nvidia card is pretty bad. You stated that you want mediacenter functionalaty and one 8500 handles that just fine. All the stuff you've read it being bad is gaming. But since you only want mediacenter functionalaty that card is enough for your needs. You won't ever need to X-fire or SLi cards if you don't want to play games.

Wouldn't X-fire or SLI get me a better picture though???


The board I have is a Asus P5K3 Deluxe. It says this on the overview of the board.

ATI CrossFire Technology
ATI´s CrossFire boosts image quality along with rendering speed, eliminating the need to scale down screen resolutions to get the high image quality you want. CrossFire ignites with the higher antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, shading, and texture settings you desire. Adjust your display configurations, experiment with your advanced 3D settings, and check the effect with a real-time 3D-rendered preview within ATI´s Catalyst™ Control Center to rule your CrossFire system.


Now does that mean it is better to use a X-Fire card or does it matter??

Sorry but I have no clue when it comes to video cards because i do not use my PC for gaming.

Ok so what would be the best brand or actual card to get?

If you don't need HDMI, this card looks nice...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814125062

Passively cooled (quiet), HDCP, and under $100.

-TyShoe

NO, Xfire and SLI will not give you a better picture... unless you have something like a 7000000x5000000 pixel display. (You see where I'm going) The 8500 series are great for home theater usage. Don't bother with the older Radeon cards. You should either buy and 8500 or wait until ATI's lower end HD2x00 cards come out.

Also is there a HDMI card that supports the SLI and Direct X10???

Watching movies on an X1900XT Crossfire setup... Wow. It would be what, 287 times faster than my trusty GeForce MX 4000 which costs $30 and also plays movies all right. Man, that's overkill...

Oh, and nVidia GeForce cards are not crap, at least not the recent ones. The best card ever is nVidia's 8800 GTX. OK, that's irrelevant here, you totally don't need that one. Get the 8500, or maybe the 8600.

To echo what others are saying ... don't even consider SLI or Crossfire for a HTPC unless you also want to use it for gaming AND don't care about fan noise while watching TV/movies.

Dee dee DEEEEE!

What is Dee dee DEEEE?

As I stated before I dont know ANYTHING about graphics cards. I deal with network stuff not hardware stuff.

Ok sounds good. I will eiter go with the 8500 with the DX10 support or wait for the 2600.

Not necessarily. You still want to future-proof yourself somewhat. As you stated, you would like to get a card with HDMI. And if you plan on doing Blu-ray or HD-DVD in the future, you're going to want the card to be HDCP compliant. For those two features, you will be spending more than $50.

-TyShoe

Not necessarily. You still want to future-proof yourself somewhat. As you stated, you would like to get a card with HDMI. And if you plan on doing Blu-ray or HD-DVD in the future, you're going to want the card to be HDCP compliant. For those two features, you will be spending more than $50.

-TyShoe


Yes I will be adding the Blu-Ray and I already have a XBox 360 HD-DVD player that can hook up through USB. So the best option will be what the response after yours and what you have already stated then?: The new ATI 2600's? Do you know what the price of those will be seeing how I want to stay around the 150 mark?

Sounds good to me.

So is the 8600gt and the 2600hd the same card pretty much or is one better then the other?

He did mention he would like a card with HDMI out. Although many of those fanless 8 series cards look nice, exactly -0- of them offer HDMI...

-TyShoe

I hate to say this with all my body but if you don't want Nvidia for a media theatre PC then wait for the AMD 2400 series for lowest price, power usage/consumption, and UVD capabilites

All the HD 2900s that I've seen just have a DVI to HDMI adapter. How does the HDMI get the audio? Do you feed it from your sound card into the video card using the VIVO dongle?

The geforce 7 cards I was looking at come with an S/PDIF cable, but I didn't see one in the pictures for the HD2900XT at newegg.

-TyShoe