4200 vs 6600GT for Win 7 HTPC

[macadami]

I'm about to refresh my HTPC with Win 7, a Athlon II X2, 2 gigs of DDR3 and probably a 785G chipset. Right now I have a Athlon 64 3200+ single core, 2 gigs of DDR1 and a 6600GT 128mb graphics card pushing vista media center and it pushes 720p to my projector in a fairly decent manner.

Any thoughts on the 4200 IGU, maybe OC'd a little, compared to what I have now? I certainly don't want to downgrade, but I'd much prefer to just use an IGU if i can for heat and less energy usage. I don't play blu ray from a drive, usually just ripped versions on a harddrive; not sure if that matters or not.

Just about every review i've read over the 4200 that tries to OC it, get very good results, even a full 1ghz on a few boards. I'm new to the whole 'Sideport Memory' thing to, but what I gather is, it's just onboard memory for the gpu so you aren't required to dedicate some system memory to it. I can't seem to find any benchmarks comparing the two, post overclock atleast, and am not sure if it infact makes that much of a performance difference.

Any advice or links to information will be much appreciated

 

[rwpritchett]

The HD4200 IGP will do everything you need for a HTPC at stock speed. If you want to play recent games then you'll want to look at discreet cards.

On the sideport vs shared memory, here is an older but still valid article you should read:

Graphics Boosted: 790GX's Side-Port Explored

Basically, the only improvement you get from sideport memory is if you combine it with shared memory anyway. By itself it doesn't really do much for you. IMHO it's just a gimmick.