I am looking for a passive graphics card for my media center PC- mainly so i can utilise the HDMI input on my panasonic plasma.
Its been a long time since I bought a graphics card and TBH I don't recognise some of the brands available.
I have pretty much decided a radeon 5450 card will do the job and i obviously want to pay as little as possible.
I don't game at all on this PC but i do want to be able to decode bluray. (processor is an amd 3600+ dual core - barton i think .. OS is W7 home premium).
So, bearing all this in mind, do i buy the cheapest i can find :

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191533

a make i have never heard of and with iffy reviews or do i go for a make i have heard of such as Sapphire or Powercolor and pay a bit more, OR do i go or a different card altogether.

Thanks

Didge.

XFX are a very well known make, but focus more on the mid to high range products, so perhaps they don't have as much exposure further down the range.

Regardless, that card looks like a reference design and is probably almost identical to others produced by Powercolor or Sapphire.

Thanks Spreadie.

As i said it is a while since i looked at GPUs. The last one i bought was an ati 9700pro and before that a voodoo2.

I tend to use macs these days.

Didge

That will be fine. A 4350 does that for me with a 64bit Athlon, rather than Barton, but still ample.

They're all much of a muchness at £30ish.

If one card is a lot cheaper than other similar models, compare the memory type and bandwidth in the specs. The old trick was to offer more memory of a slower type and a narrow pipe, to fool people into thinking they're getting a bargain.

As James says, they're all roughly the same, and you don't need a lot of power, so might not make a lot of difference anyway.

Thanks guys. Looks like i am on the right track!

Didge

Any 5450 will be fine.
The 5450 handles HDAUDIO as well for bluray

Excellent so 5450 ordered.
Next .. have been given a Bluray drive, what software do i need to play movies from within the media center environment?
TIA for the help, I am such a W7 novice ..
Didge

That's a Sas question! Sorry

Arcsoft Total Media Theatre.

Thanks Saspro .. $90 .. not the cheapest plug in then ..

I'm starting to think a stand alone Bluray would have been cheaper & easier despite being given the actual drive!

Didge

Apparently powerdvd also has a plugin but it's as flakey as anything

Does MPC not play Blu Ray? That's free.

http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/History.html

Hmm, it certainly refers to BD support but looks like the WAF is close to zero!

I'm prepared to pay to get this thing going but i just think asking $90 is a bit much .. I'm now hunting for discounts on this .. looks like it can be bought from NewEgg if you are on the other side of the pond and prepared to download for $59 which seems much more reasonable.

Thanks Saspro for the alternative software .. again buggy software leads to ear ache so i'd rather get the more reliable stuff.

Out of interest, I see from other posts that you run a number of media pcs .. do you have bluray support on them? Is it reliable?

Didge

I have bluray on them all. Using arcsoft integrated in to WMC.
Works like a charm. Every so often I need to update the arcsoft but it tells me when I fire it up.
It passes all the tests the wife has set for usability.