[champ222]

Hi Guys

Ive had a look around here and i cant see a thread that discusses all these cards in one place, so i wonder if i could start a discussion...

I have a self built HTPC with the following specs:

Gigabyte G31M-ES2L
Intel E-8400
4GB DDR2

used to use Windows XP with XBMC 10 without issues, but that meant not HD Audio.

So i updated to win 8 and XBMC 12.2 and an AMD6450, and i now wish i hadnt!

I want to move to Openelec, and i need to get an Nvidia card so i can get HD Audio.

I see the GT430 and GT520 are quite popular for a linux based HTPC, but with the 6 series cards out now, which is the best option to go for?

Important for me are:
HD AUDIO - DTS HD-MA etc
Smooth 24p (23.976) - I realise this is never likely to be "perfect"
Reliability - once set up i want it to work everytime without fiddling about with it.
Wake on LAN - this is how i switch on the HTPC at the moment
cool and quiet would be nice too - Its a big case, but not great ventilation (origen AE H5 case)

Thanks in advance for your guidance

Andy

[momaku]

I have a Lubuntu 13.04 with Frodo 12.2. A GT620 card, Intel Celeron 1610T processor working without problem.

[Hannes The Hun]

please move to hardware forum for HTPC build. also: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=161987

[FernetMenta]

Sure, a gtx660 with 960 Cuda cores will work without problems as well
gt610 is rebranded gt520, you don't need more power for XBMC.

[gfisher]

The fan less gt610 is great on xubuntu. On windows 7 the ati7750 is fantastic. Both great on frodo. Advanced Deinterlacing 1080i is superb and 24p is smooth. No judder on both sets. Good luck. G

[basco]

Gt630 here. Works great. 1080i temporal spatial deinterlacing works great. I had a gt 530 but that card seemed to have difficulties with 1080i temporal spatial deinterlacing.

[robo989]

GT430...

Buy a cheapo zalman £2.99 fan controller (cut fan header swap with the zalman one if you have a 4 pin mini one with 3 pins wired on your GT430)...

Doing this you can make the GT430 literally silent and still keep the card cool...not sure what it is with those fans on all GT430s running at stupid speeds, totally not needed.

[negge]

I've got a GT520 myself, and my dad has a GT210. If I'd buy anything right now, I'd get the cheapest passively cooled GT610.

[nickr]

GT610 is a little light for the really good deinterlacing options, other than that the fact it is silent/fanless makes it an excellent choice.

[FernetMenta]

GT610 is a little light for the really good deinterlacing options, other than that the fact it is silent/fanless makes it an excellent choice.

I use a gt520 and it does temporal/spatial for 1080i@60 without problems. (my new implementation of vdpau). I even have increased the number of fields for interpolation from the minimum of 2 past and 1 future (mainline version) to 4 past and 2 future fields.

[nickr]

That sounds great news, because those low profile fanless cards are perfect for a HTPC.

[FernetMenta]

My main use case is pvr with 1080i@50. I use onboard GPU because the single expansion slot is taken by a tv card. If deinterlacing wasn't working properly, I would have given up long ago.

[gfisher]

I got this one. Gt610 fan less, GV-N610SL-1GI. $40ish.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product...id=4221#ov

Add it to the - it works list.

I finally got TVheadend working with ATSC mpeg2 1080i60/720p60/480i60 US OTA (via hvr2250) and the temporal/spacial deinterlacing works perfect coupled with an a4 3400apu. No noticeable drops/judder. Using Frodo 12.2 xvba branch. Picture quality is fantastic. Blu-ray like on a 40inch LCD.

[fritsch]

@gfisher:
Too sad, that you need the GT610 ... on Windows the A4 GPU can do that quite fine alone :-) Hail to fglrx linux drivers and support.

Having a GT610 myself here and running Temporal / Spatial in a Zotac ID42 - all fine and good looking.

[gfisher]

@fritsch
No it really was not `necessary`. The a4 3400 played back perfectly everything. I bought the 610 to test the spacial/temporal deinterlacing. The Bob deinterlacing on a4 was judder/drop free and decent quality. Most people would be quite happy with it. I was for months. I wanted to try the 610 really for fun. The pq is improved on interlaced content. It is noticeably sharper. For $40 i am pleased. Maybe some day AMD will make vector adaptive deinterlacing (from win7) part of fglrx then the apu will be a king of the htpc. W/o a graphics card I would still use and APUs with xvba Frodo. I have another a6 apu trinity going strong...