6150SE or X600 SE

[opilion]

I am upgrading two PCs in our home with ASRock motherboards based on GeForce 6150SE/nForce 430. They will both be running Vista Home Premium. Because one of the PCs is an HTPC, I need a cheap PCI Express card with s-video - I found a 128MB X600 SE card w/DVI+S-Video for $16. The second PC is primarily an office/email/web browsing system, but has a monitor with DVI input. Does it make sense to add an X600 SE card to this system as well - just for the DVI output? How will this card perform in Vista relative to the onboard 6150SE?

 

[boonality]

I have an X800XL and an X800GT in two different computers and I like em. They play movies fine and what not.

 

[opilion]

I picked up 2 of the $16 X600SE cards. I'll try one in the HTPC setup, and compare it to the onboard 6150SE. Then I'll either keep the second card or return it based on how it goes. I guess another option would be to spend the $$ on additional system RAM and allocate more to the 6150. Any comments?

 

[EXT64]

Well, the onboard ram should help a bit, though both are fairly slow cards so it may not matter. I guess all you can do is test and see. For $16 I don't think you can go wrong.

 

[boonality]

I would say they are obviously behind the times for gaming but my X800 still serves me well. Granted the newest game I own is FEAR, but it does play well at medium settings.

 

[opilion]

Don't plan to do much gaming on these systems... Will both cards be adequate for Vista's Aero UI?