Hello again Sam, I pretty confident I can rely on your judgement so here goes, I have been fairly happy with my XFX 8600GT 256MB so far, played COD 4, am playing Crysis happily on a 32" LCD with "Custom" settings. However, I have now also moved into the Bluray scene and have come accross the HDCP handshake issue. I have been able to overcome this with AnyDVD HD but would rather not have to mess about like that. I have identified that it is the 8600GT that is not HDCP compliant. Therefore I need some recomendations for a replacement to have HDCP compliance and I might as well boost games as well. I am thinking in the 8800GT or 9600GT price range but want to be forwarned of any issues please. I've heard about bsod issues with the 9600 and is there a dual-view issue with 8800's or is that just an SLI issue? Lay it on me.
i would go for a 3870. they have great video quality and will work great for what you want to do. it looks like your using a tv as you monitor, and if it has hdmi you can use the included adapter to send audio and video to the tv with one cord. you might need to update the bios on this card so the fan runs faster but that is the only is thing wrong with it. the dual monitor problem you mentioned is a mulit gpu issue. so if you are running one card it will work fine. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161218
Would it not have been better to PM me or post in my shoutbox if you only wanted to speak to me? Heh, there are other helpful folks here too, like krj for example! For HD video quality, ATI cards are the best of the bunch. Given the recent price drop, going for an HD3870 is logical, especially now the drivers have finally been sorted.
lol Sam's pretty damn popular around here! Can you try to squeeze for the new 4850? Pretty damn good card.
He could - but I don't know how well his case is cooled, I'd be worried about stability given the HD4850's high running temps in a standard fare case. Believe it or not the HD4850 seems to run cooler than the 8800GT in quite a lot of tests even before the Arctic silver modification, but results seem to vary significantly. Fortunately since the cards only have a single slot backplate, it shouldn't be too hard to fit an HR-03GT to them, but by the time you've done that you've got one expensive card, double the cost of the aforementioned 3870, but then double the speed...
Have considered the 4850. Not ruled it out just yet. My case is a standards ATX but with front and rear fans, active fan on the Main chip heatsink and aluminium heatsink added to the other chip. Standard HSF on the C2D E8400
The experience of many with the P5N-E SLI board is that the chipset runs practically on fire, such a heat source near the back of the card may prove troublesome, as it would for any dual sided memory cards such as the GTX200 series or 9800GX2.
Good advice. I've not found the need to O/C the system as yet. It took a while to get it stable at stock but it is now. I added the chipset cooling becuase I thought the same and the parts were free from an old system. Can only help with longevity. I'm worried about all the driver issues with ATI. I hear there are still some with Bluray HD and SD content playback that needs a registry hack. Nvidia always seems to work for me out of the box.
Actually, I tend to hear ATI cards are far better at producing HD video, especially from a picture quality standpoint. Typically nvidia focus on getting extra frames in games, at the expense of image quality.
I hear the same about quality being better than nvidia's PureVideo HD technology but with ATI the driver quirks apprently cause video format, screen size ratio issues and varies according to disc widescreen format. its a bloody mine field trying to cope with gaming and HD requirements, but of course a gaming rig has all the tools you need, but its bigger and noise could be an issue compared to a dedicated HTPC. Then there's the Nvidia optimised games too!!!
Most games these days are optimised for nvidia cards not ATI, which is why the extra performance occurs most of the time. However, playing games on an ATI card is far from difficult, and give how ridiculously powerful the HD4850s are compared to previous stuff, there's no reason not to buy one. I don't use 'official channels' so to speak, but my HD3870 is unstoppable playing High def content with correct codecs etc.
