Video Card Advise

[dirtyvu]

Unless the card is sold overclocked, the power consumption is the same across all brands for that particular model. So you don't have to worry about ASUS vs. MSI vs. EVGA, etc.

Anandtech is a great review site that talks about power consumption. Tom's hardware too. Techreport.com is great too. They'll tell you how much power the card uses under load and how much when the system is idle.

If power/heat is not a concern, but Nvidia and ATI make great cards so shop by features and price. If power/heat is a concern, I would rank it... the low end 4XXX cards are miserly and cool like the 4350. As you go up in graphics performance, you go up in power/heat.

The ATI 3XXX series run as hot as their Nvidia counterparts. Of course, this is oversimplified but it's pretty accurate.

The ATI 2XXX series I wouldn't touch. Performance is okay, price is okay, but I think if you compare generation to generation, for that generation, the Nvidia cards were better. Ran cooler and had better performance.

[StanO]

I got a Gigabyte 4670 for $50(USD) on Newegg. Fullsize card, other people complained of excessive noise, mine is not an HTPC, so I didn't notice a problem.

That being said the card is great, but for GBPVR purposes it was only a small step up from the onboard x1200. In VLC it's great, but I still haven't figured out the right combo of Mux/decoder that will give good HD file playback. I can tell it's not the card, because the stuttering is the same whether the window is small or fullscreen.

Ironically, on my laptop with the AMD chipset and built in ati3200 runs HD playback better wirelessly (through GBPVR).