8800GT v 4850 for HTPC ?

[CSA]

I know these two cards are similar 'ish for games performance because i own both but before i did any installing/reinstalling i wanted to ask is there any difference in the two for HD playback and onboard sound processing for home theater ?

I currently have my 4850 installed (waiting to upgrade to 5xxx) and when i make that upgrade either this card or my 8800Gt will be chucked into a HTPC for blu ray play back but i want to know which will perform better for both visual AND audio


Thoughts ?

 

[kylew]

You'll be better off with a 4850 for sound over HDMI and a lot of people appear to find the video quality of 4800s better.

 

[Grimley]

+1 for using Ati

 

[Rroff]

If your planning on blu-ray playback over HDMI then use whichever one has native HDMI (not dongle) otherwise your gonna be best off not using both and getting something like one of the 4670 that does have native. HDMI dongles almost always break HDCP even the ones that say they can do HDCP... and HDCP never seems to play nice with DVI so your left to the mercies of VGA which may not be supported in the future - or coughing up for anyDVD HD which again might not work in teh future.

Video quality between the 2 is very much subjective to your tastes and setup.

 

[HazardO]

Doesn't ATI offer a free Blue ray compute shader decoder while Nvidia charges for theirs?