More > Media Center 14 (Development Ended)
Blu-ray Dolby / DTS TrueHD
Matt:
--- Quote from: glynor on December 27, 2009, 12:46:15 am ---Matt... I hadn't seen this thread before, but I should mention this....
What resolution are you gaming at? If you are playing on a 1080p home theater display, you do NOT need one of the high-end AMD 5870 cards. They are completely overkill for resolutions like that.
A $170 Radeon 5770 will push pretty much any game you want at 1080p resolutions with the quality settings cranked and AA turned on at 4x at around 40fps. Even the cheaper 5850 is overkill in a dramatic fashion, but if you want to make darn sure you won't have ANY stuttering ever even on Crysis, you could certainly go with one of those (or just get a second 5770 in a few months when they get cheaper).
--- End quote ---
I have a basment that's an office and theater (read man cave) and I use the same computer for both. So it needs to be able to handle 1920x1200, which is just a little more than 1080p.
But I think you may be overstating the Crysis thing:
http://hardocp.com/article/2009/09/22/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5870_video_card_review/9
Even a 5870 can't really drive a 24" monitor with things turned up (like 8x AA). It's possible Fermi will be able to, but I haven't seen a good answer as to whether it'll support the HD audio formats we're talking about in this thread.
jmone:
Matt - I'm happy with the passive ATI HD-4550 for HTPC duties, it's cheap, silent and will pass decoded HD Audio as LPCM over HDMI to the receiver....but I'm not a gamer and the my reciever does not decode the latest HD codecs. The later ATI 5XXX will also pass the Audio as a Bitstream but all the details of what it works with can be found here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1179134
Matt:
--- Quote from: jmone on December 27, 2009, 07:43:49 pm ---Matt - I'm happy with the passive ATI HD-4550 for HTPC duties, it's cheap, silent and will pass decoded HD Audio as LPCM over HDMI to the receiver....but I'm not a gamer and the my reciever does not decode the latest HD codecs. The later ATI 5XXX will also pass the Audio as a Bitstream but all the details of what it works with can be found here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1179134
--- End quote ---
In some ways I like this LPCM approach most because it lets the computer be the brains instead of the amplifier.
But I don't think it's possible to output multi-channel LPCM over the HDMI of an nVidia GTX 280 card, meaning I need a new video card anyway.
jmone:
Nope - only:
--- Quote ---GTX 280 and 260 can output the following audio formats over HDMI:
2-channel LPCM
6-channel DD bitstream
6-channel DTS bitstream
Unfortunately there's no support for 8-channel LPCM or bitstreaming of Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD-MA
--- End quote ---
glynor:
--- Quote from: Matt on December 27, 2009, 07:08:45 pm ---But I think you may be overstating the Crysis thing:
http://hardocp.com/article/2009/09/22/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5870_video_card_review/9
Even a 5870 can't really drive a 24" monitor with things turned up (like 8x AA). It's possible Fermi will be able to, but I haven't seen a good answer as to whether it'll support the HD audio formats we're talking about in this thread.
--- End quote ---
I really like Kyle (at HardOCP), and I actually like the way he reviews cards and game performance, but sometimes he doesn't take into account what the real-world benefit is or is not for settings that you enable.
The reason that NOTHING, other than dual-GPU setups which still struggle, can play Crysis with Enthusiast mode settings enabled is that it is broken and poorly coded. The Enthusiast mode settings in Crysis isn't about improving quality, it is about punishing graphics cards. Does it improve image quality over the Gamer setting? Sure. Does it improve it so dramatically that it is worth the performance cost? No, not at all. Other game engines seem to manage to push out even superior IQ and do it with dramatically better performance. If you actually still play Crysis Warhead, set it to Gamer mode like everyone else and stop worrying.
Still, yes... If all you care about is running Crysis at 1900x1200 on Enthusiast settings you are certainly best going with a pair of 5870s (or a 5970 if you can find one). For literally EVERYTHING ELSE, a single 5850 will do just fine at that resolution and you might be able to deal with a 5770. (Also note, there have been driver improvements since those release-date reviews came out that have provided approximately 6-12% performance bump around the board for most games.) We've also seen availability stabilize over the past month with the 40-nm TSMC parts, so prices should begin to fall back closer to the launch prices over the next month or so.
For Fermi.... Yes, it may well be a monster. However, it is probably still some time out (late Feb/March launch is what I'm seeing widely rumored). And, this doesn't bode well for performance per watt numbers: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/12/21/nvidia-castrates-fermi-448sps/
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