Nvidia & Blu-Ray

[Savage1701]

Just curious, does a 9000 series card outperform its 8000 series predecessor/counterpart when it comes to decoding Blu-Ray, or is it a situation where if it's good enough, it's good enough?

If a 9000 series outperforms an 8000 series, does anyone have any recommendations? The card will not be used for gaming.

Thanks for any help.

 

[LinkedKube]

your margin of increase is so low you wont notice it. That will be more dependent on your other hardware. update your pc specs in your profile as well so we can better help you.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Not really, since all the 9 series cards are refreshes of the 8 series. However, I'd recommend something like an HD 3450 solely for the very low power draw.

 

[Captain828]

generally speaking... yes it does:

the 9 series all have the newer PureVideo 2 hardware decoder

the older 8 series G80 based cards had PureVideo HD (with VP1); the 8 series refreshes had the newer one however (like the 8800GT)

now it heavily depends on what processor you have; if it's a slow one then a VP2 card is going to help you a lot... if it's a fast one (eg: >2GHz Core 2 Duo) then the performance increase will not be noticable

here and here are two tables that should clear some things out a bit for you

 

[Savage1701]

Hey, thanks to all for the constructive comments.

A few details about the system:

Intel board with 955 chipset. 4GB RAM. XP Pro 32-bit with all Service Packs except SP3 due to some potential conflicts with BeyondTV. 840 series Pentium at 2.8 GHz. I have a 3.2GHz 940 that I can put in, but was not going to if not needed. I don't have any stuttering or playback issues, so I'm not too concerned there. Also, I do have the Platinum-level Nvidia PureView software decoder I bought a couple of years ago installed. I don't know if the card augments that or overrides it or works with it. Cyberlink PowerDVD shows that I am using PureVideo decoding in its config window. The specific card is a Foxconn 8600GTS.

I have considered ATI and actually have a spare HD 3650, but since I only have one graphic card in the system I was not overly concerned about the power draw.

Maybe it's subjective, but the Cyberlink player seems to do a better job that WinDVD 9+BR. I would say neither hits the quality of our PS3 player. Both the PS3 and the HTPC feed via HDMI.

If this changes anyone's opinion I'd be interested in knowing. If upping the CPU can help, I will do that. If upping the card would make a difference, I would do that. It is best for my situation to have a half-length card. A full-length card is too tight.

I am open to ATI or Nvidia if a card upgrade would make a substantial difference.

Thanks for any ideas.