Looking for new Video card for HTPC

[Varun]

I had my motherboard die in my XP MCE 2005 machine, so I figured I would take the opportunity to upgrade to Vista Media Center.

Unfortunately I have found my video quality of live and recorded SDTV has taken a huge hit, and my CPU is being taxed just watching SDTV.

After a lot of digging around I seem to have found out the 7600GT offers no hardware accelerated video in Vista which is a huge bummer. In MCE 2005 video quality of TV and especially DVDs was amazing, some times looking almost as good as my HD-DVD player (now a paperweight), while using Nvidia Purevideo DVD decoder. This is not the case in Vista, so I guess I am in the market for a new video card.

I don't want to spend a fortune on a new card, and this machine is a HTPC first, and does almost no gaming. The odd time I will fire up Lord of the Rings Online or my wife will play Sims 2 on the 1080p LCD but if I can get performance as good as the 7600GT or maybe slightly better I would be happy.

I've read good things about the 38x0 series of AMD cards, but have always used nVidia cards. The price is a bit high though and perhaps more card than I need.

Should I just get a 2600XT passive? Would an 8500GT or 8600 do as well or worse?

The thing that matters to me most is picture quality of recorded TV and DVDs. There is no budget but remember this is a HTPC not a gaming rig - I have one of those which does just fine.

System specs:
AMD 4000+ X2
M2N-E
2GB RAM
380w Seasonic
Vista Home Premium

Any recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Varun]

No one has any experience with this?

 

[error8]

The 3850 will be the best choice probably, but it also costs more and it isn't passive. It does have the ability to decode 1080p videos, so that is superb for a HTPC. The other choice will be that passive 2600XT, it decodes 720p videos, and is good for some very light gaming like Sims2.

 

[BassBomb]

7600GT should be able to decode 1080p :S my 7900GS has no problem with PureVideo, but that is with XP

Go with anything from the newer ATI line which have a much improved decoder

 

[Varun]

BassBomb - the whole problem is that nVidia did not enable hardware acceleration of video in the Vista drivers for the 7x00 series.

error8 - thanks for the info I went with the 3850, it was a bit more than I wanted to spend but if it does full hardware decode of 1080p it will be worth it.