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[DiiPii]

Unilt now I've aonly being useing MNC for music, but I'm going to try the whole HTPC thing. I'm looking to buy a HD video card that can meet my needs for the reasonable future. There's no realbudget contrainsts and I'd prefer to invest now in something that wil last me a  couple of years. 

My only real requirements are:

(1) I want to be able to run one HDMI cable running from my HTPC to my 60" plasma so the card is going to have to embed the audio stream onto the hdmi signal - if I've read right, that's goign to limit me to an ATI card by AMD (I assume there's no issues running these on a newish intel MoBo?

(2) Whatever card I select will run alongside a second lower spec video card in the same pc (MoBo has 2 PCIe slots so I'm not limited by the MoBo) but I do need a secondary DVI output on this new vid-card to feed my third screen in my three monitor desktop set-up.

I was thinking of the Diamond Radeon HD 4870 X2 but would I'd appreaciate user recomendations/thoughts.

[DarkPenguin]

Depends on the horsepower required.  Is this thing just a HTPC or is it also a gaming PC?

BTW, you can add an audio stream to the HDMI out of the current Nvidias.  It has to come from another sound card however as they do not have their own audio hardware.  Also, if you are using Vista (I don't know what the rules are for Xp) all your cards need to use the same video driver.  (So if you have nvidia you have to buy nvidia, ditto ATI...)  I believe Win 7 fixes this.

[DiiPii]

Good call on the video drivers DP...guess I'll be buying two of whatever card I chose.

It's not a gaming PC (at all), just HD video & Music>>>but I want something that's going to have enough horse power to get me through a few years...I don't want to be upgrading every year. I'm just not not sure how much GPU power is needed to process HD well (I'd rather err on side of too much power rather than too little...but at same time, don't want to unecessarily waste wads of money).

Re Nvidea video cards, I thought getting audio on board the HDMI would require running the video-card HDMI-out through a sound card capable of adding audio and then out again. This would require me to buy a sound card capable of too...which I am not averse to if it's the best option, but it' seems complicated/messy and the reading I've done (AVS forum) didn't seem very positive of these solutions. Have you tried this/had success?

I'm looking for a sensible mix of quality and ease of set up.

[DarkPenguin]

The HD 4350, 4550 and pretty much any 4XXX card (including the one you mentioned) can offload the bulk of bluray decoding.  You just need a decoder that supports  DXVA.

The only real caveat to the card you've mentioned is that it does require a lot more power to run.  Power equals heat equals fans equals noise.

I have not used an Nvidia setup.  So I can't comment on that.

[Daydream]

No video card will last 3 years unless you don't play games and then don't care. They'll come out with DirectX 11, with the moon on a platter, with something that you'll want and the current card can't do regardless of its power. Then wasting that much money it's not advisable unless you're a power gamer and you're gonna use it heavily right now, every day and night.

Otherwise best bang for your bucks you get with a 4770. The funny question would be how easy is to switch from crossfire (say you get 2 x 4770 which are like $200-210) to HTPC - you can't run multiple monitors with the cards in Crossfire the way I remember it. If it would be just a switch in Catalyst then that's what I'd call the best of both worlds.