What kind of video card can i get by with in a home theater media pc?

[Losse]

My setup besides the vid card will be something like this:

CPU: Core2Duo E6850 3GHz (overclocked to 3.71 GHz)
MOBO: 680i Sli
Grphx: ???
RAM: 4Gigs 1066 MHz - Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5D
PSU: Antec 430W
HD: 1TB Seagate Barracuda
OS: Ubuntu
I plan to buy a mid size tower for this.

Since i am using an old power supply i have laying around ill have to really watch the PSU wattage. But i was thinking i can get away with a pretty cheap vid card. My TV has HDMI slots (not micro HDMI), and its 1080p so i want to get a card that will support 1080p. As long as i have a HMDI out on the video card, will it have the ability to push out 1080p as long as the media is HD?

I'll be streaming movies from my main pc when not playing BD directly from this little media pc.

[Activate: AMD]

5450 is the absolute lowest, costing about $20 and drawing about 15w. AMD 5570 is a great choice, it has a lot more horsepower, but costs more like 50-60$ and uses a decent amount more power. I think the 5570 would be fine with your PSU

[Pehu]

Overclocked CPU for a home theater PC? Any reason for the overclock? I'd actually rather underclock it and make the cooling as silent as possible.

Another option in addition to the graphics cards already mentioned would be to replace that motherboard you are using with a G35 (with GMA X3500 integrated graphics). You could go with a microATX mobo and get away with using a lot smaller case. The trouble is that socket775 motherboards aren't really all that easy to come by anymore.

[Losse]

Thanks for the info. I have to use this mobo cause its free Its OCed now for gaming since its my surrent main game PC. Yeah ill drop it back down to 3ghz for the new rig.

I got sandybridge feaver and my PC is over 3 years old, so the old parts go to my first home theater PC

For these older cards is AMD/ATI best for cost/performace?

How about a Geforce GT 430? It runs with about 100 less watts, slightly faster clock, but the ATI card has more stream processors?

[Pehu]

Thanks for the info. I have to use this mobo cause its free Its OCed now for gaming since its my surrent main game PC. Yeah ill drop it back down to 3ghz for the new rig.

I got sandybridge feaver and my PC is over 3 years old, so the old parts go to my first home theater PC

For these older cards is AMD/ATI best for cost/performace?

How about a Geforce GT 430? It runs with about 100 less watts, slightly faster clock, but the ATI card has more stream processors?

GT430 will do just fine also. The GT430 uses a bit less than 10 watts less than 5570 and probably a few watts more than the 5450 (total power consumption under load for 5450 is around 20watts, I do not know how you got the 100W figure).

[Losse]

Thats just what it says on newegg item descriptions 400w for the ati and 300w for the gt 430, minimum.

Yeah newegg detailed descriptions arent really detailed in some cases.

[Pehu]

Those numbers are pretty far off and probably there just to be on the extremely safe side.The theoretical maximum power draw for any PCI-E card without additional power connectors is 75W and none of those cards mentioned come even close.

[arfritz]

I have this card in my HTPC http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102882

I love my setup, don't use it much recently, but I have a good excuse for it.

My system is near silent from 5' away. The only issue is watching BluRay or DVD's I haven't ripped and the disk spinning.

[Enmore]

You don't need a very powerful system to play Blu Rays. I was using Arcsoft's Total Media Theatre on a dual core 1.8 Ghz Pentium PC to do it until recently. I didn't even have a separate graphics card. The nVidia NVIDIA Geforce 9400 chipset did the legwork and the processor barely raised a sweat.

Before that I used a passively cooled ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics card in an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system.

[John C]

You don't need a very powerful system to play Blu Rays. I was using Arcsoft's Total Media Theatre on a dual core 1.8 Ghz Pentium PC to do it until recently. I didn't even have a separate graphics card. The nVidia NVIDIA Geforce 9400 chipset did the legwork and the processor barely raised a sweat.

Before that I used a passively cooled ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics card in an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system.

People get confused, Blu-Ray is not very taxing on a vid card, since it is progressive scan. 1080i, or standard def is actually more demanding since the system has to de-interlace the material.

[HeavyG]

Thanks for the info. I have to use this mobo cause its free Its OCed now for gaming since its my surrent main game PC. Yeah ill drop it back down to 3ghz for the new rig.

I got sandybridge feaver and my PC is over 3 years old, so the old parts go to my first home theater PC

For these older cards is AMD/ATI best for cost/performace?

How about a Geforce GT 430? It runs with about 100 less watts, slightly faster clock, but the ATI card has more stream processors?

GT 430 should do you just fine. I am running an 8400 GS on mine and it does everything well except it doesn't support BluRay 3D playback, which doesn't matter since I don't have a 3D display anyways.