2011-06-13, 20:36
Anandtech has a roundup of five "HTPC" cards inc. the GT430 and GT520. That article suggests the 520 will never be capable of matching the GT430 in terms of deinterlacing and post-processing because it lacks the shader units required. On the other hand its throughput is very impressive - should you be needing to process a 100Mbps 1080p24 H.264 stream ... And another thing to keep in mind is that while the Gigabyte GT520 is fanless and low profile - the heatsink is huge and likely to take up a second slot. For peeps like me with a Wesena ITX7-2 (single low profile expansion slot) that heatsink is going to be just too big. And from the reviews I've read the fans on the other GT520's are too loud and whiney for serious HTPC use. What could've been a nice upgrade to the GT210 has turned out to be somewhat pointless.
Me, well I recently "upgraded" to a sandy bridge HTPC giving my parents my Revo R3700 - wish I hadn't tbh - Intel need to pull their fingers out driver wise because it's not a match for the ION system right now (even if it's really very very quiet). I've just bought a cheap, fanless GT210 to try and tide myself over till (if?) such time as Intel get their drivers sorted (and vaapi approaches VDPAU) - hopefully my picopsu will cope!
Me, well I recently "upgraded" to a sandy bridge HTPC giving my parents my Revo R3700 - wish I hadn't tbh - Intel need to pull their fingers out driver wise because it's not a match for the ION system right now (even if it's really very very quiet). I've just bought a cheap, fanless GT210 to try and tide myself over till (if?) such time as Intel get their drivers sorted (and vaapi approaches VDPAU) - hopefully my picopsu will cope!