Video Shopping Overload

[Sowser]

It’s been a while since I’ve built a rig from the ground up and in the interim video card choices have expanded significantly. With such a proliferation it’s hard to narrow it down. Where is the current sweet spot price/performance? I’ve decided on the ASUS P6T Deluxe and will be housing everything in an Atec 1200. Some considerations are that I’ll be using a 32’’ 1080P LCD 4ms refresh TV as a monitor (32LG60) so I’m interested in HDMI connectivity. Are DVI adapters just as good? I’ll also be doing some gaming and video editing so need some decent power but do I go one big dog video card or get two lesser cards running in tandem? Plus I’ll be using my rig as a home theater system so noise is a factor. How viable is water cooling? My budget is around $350 but could go higher if it gets me a significant gain. So is a water cooled, HDMI, reasonably powerful video card for $350-400 feasible? Any thoughts would be helpful!

[Skippman]

Well they just dropped the price on the Powercolor Radeon 4870 1G Version to $200. I went ahead and ordered a second one for my gaming rig (also in an Antec 1200). The cards air cooler works very well and my PC seems to be nearly silent when gaming. It's certianlly no louder than the other 5 120mm fans at 800RPM that I'm running. You could water cool it with a Koolance total card cooler for another $100 putting you within your $300 budget.

ATI cards have dedicated hardware for decoding DVD and upscaling it, reducing dependency on the processor. It also has the ability to decode and transmit audio via it's HDMI interface. So for my money I think a 4870 would be your best bet within your budget.

[ibleet]

Well that was certainly one sided, now here is the other side:

Nvidia 9800GT in the ~$130 range.

Nvidia 9800GTX in the ~160 range.

Two of either of these cards in SLI should just about handle anything you throw at 'em.

Or...you could opt for a single GTX 260 or GTX 280.

I prefer a single card solution, but that's just my preference. My single 8800GTS tears up everything I throw at it...STILL. That may change, however, as more games become optimized for SLI and crossfire.

[Skippman]

Well that was certainly one sided, now here is the other side:

I can only speak on what I know my brother. I haven't used a NVidia card since the TNT2 days.

[Sowser]

Thanks guys. I've settled on the SAPPHIRE 100270SR Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB as a great price vs. performance choice. Like ibleet I prefer a single card (which in this case is actually 2 cards) but the dvd upscaling is very key to what I'm using the computer for. As it turns out this should have been on the ATI forum!

[ibleet]

I can only speak on what I know my brother. I haven't used a NVidia card since the TNT2 days.

And I haven't used an ATI card since the All in Wonder Pro.