Gaming Video card with Full 1080p support?

[smokinu]

Well I enjoy gaming alot and recently I have been conveinced to move my pc to my living room to be closer to the wife so we both can play. (she uses a laptop, and I a desktop) So I dont really have a gaming machine atm but I am looking at building one. Now with it relocating to the TV room I figured why not try to incorporate a partial HTPC setup as well. So Here is my big thing.

Does anyone know of a Graphics card with Full 1080p HMDI support? I know there are the 5 new ones released from MSI recently but they are just not powerful enough. I dont care if its Nvidia or ATI jsut as long its along the lines of the 275 or 4890 quality or higher.

So anyone have any ideas?

Mahalo

 

[smokinu]

I am not so concerned specifically about an hmdi connector but rather because of the specialized 1080p processing cards that are out there now and I was not sure if soething specialized would really be needed as the higher end cards are alot more powerful. THe big thing is the encoded issue with 1080p being so resource intensive. I just not sure if say a 4890 or 275 could handle it or not.

 

[jaguarskx]

If you are referring to decoding Blu-Ray movies and H.264 encoded for playback on an HDTV then any mainstream video card can handle it as long as your CPU is powerful enough (the average modern CPU is) to handle the video decoding that is not offloaded to your video card.

In general ATI cards display better video quality than nVidia, but "better" is always subjective.

Not sure what games you intend to play and what graphic qualities you intend to set your games to. At a minimum, I would recommend a HD 4770 or 9800GTX+ which should make nearly all games playable with medium graphics quality. However, faster is better so you may want something more powerful like a HD 4890 or GTX 285.

Something you may want to keep in mind is since the card is going into a HTPC you may want to consider the noise factor. Do you want to hear your PC while you are trying to watch a movie. Generally speaking, the more powerful something the more amount of cooling is necessary which can mean a loud fan.

 

[Dekasav]

I am pretty sure that all Radeons with UVD2 could decode blu-ray, as long as the CPU is >2Ghz. That's video, as far as gaming, you'll want something strong, like the HD 4890 and GTX 275.

I guess I'm not really sure what you mean by "full 1080p HDMI support". All Radeons down to the HD 3450 can process blu-ray seamlessly given even a low-end processor, and all discrete Radeons even have a 7.1 sound chip on them, to send audio with the video.

 

[smokinu]

Thanks for all the replies. Yeah I will be building a new system so the cpu will br strong enough for sure. I currently have a q6600 and q9300 but I am considering the i7 platform.

As far as the noise though I will implementing a water cooling solution. More than likely an external water cooling bit. I have seen however that I think its powercooler that has the 4890 with a waterblock already attached to it.

The system I hope to build will be able to play darn near every game title and allow the ability to play blue ray, streaming hd movies from online to big screen, etc. It's not going to be a full blown HTPC but kinda a hybrid.

Mahalo for all the help

 

[IAISIS]

I am currently in the same boat as i am building a computer and upon researching video cards i stumbled across the XFX Radeon HD 4870 XXX Edition Video Card on Tiger Direct and in its specs it states "1080p support No" which confused me and sent me on this seach till i got here so in answer to what Dekasav said

"I guess I'm not really sure what you mean by "full 1080p HDMI support". All Radeons down to the HD 3450 can process blu-ray seamlessly given even a low-end processor, and all discrete Radeons even have a 7.1 sound chip on them, to send audio with the video."

I think this is what Smokinu was reffering to if im not mistaken, I personally have just decided to go with the HD 4890 but am still wondering my self how something that has HDMI outs and a max resolution of 2560 x 1600 (Digital) would state that it is not 1080p supportive ?? Not sure if anyone can answer this for me.

 

[leon2006]

If you have the money just go for 4890 for ATI or 275 for NVIDIA. If you'r considering I7 platform X58 chipset can do SLI & CF just in case you'r looking at in that direction.

 

[Gin Fushicho]

I cant think of a video card that doesnt support 1080p now a days unless its 5-6 years old.

 

[Dustpuppy]

If you want to hook it up to the TV why not just grab a TV tuner and turn your PC into a DVR as well
I think these go both ways, though I've never tried it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380047+4802&QksAutoSuggestion=&Configurator=&Subcategory=47&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=