ATI HD4550/4450 The Close to Perfect HTPC Video Card?

ATI/AMD is slated to release the Radeon HD4550 by the end of September. Word on the street is it will cost $50-60 for a 512MB version and as low as $39 for a 256MB version. Low-end cards in general are always looked down upon in the gaming community for being much too slow for anything but displaying a desktop. However, the HD4550 brings video acceleration for MPEG2/VC-1/H.264 material as well as multi-channel LPCM over HDMI to the table. It will also likely be offered with passive cooling (no fan) from several vendors. While these features are not found on other cards like the HD4870, it is however a breakthrough for low-end video cards. For example, I have some parts leftover from a Socket 939 AMD 3800+ X2 dual core system that merely needs a case and video card. I can revive this older outdated hardware by just throwing in an HD4550 and I can let my parents use this computer as an HTPC.

Current State of HTPC IGP Motherboards

The proliferation of the HTPC IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor or onboard video) motherboards has made it quite confusing for people to decide on what path to take. The beauty of onboard video is tighter packaging and generally less power consumption which leads to less noise. Most people don't like the eyesore of a PC tower in the living room which has led to various form factors that allow for smaller packaging, some of which are so low profile that a regular video card or addon card becomes difficult to fit. Power consumption is generally a common factor to how a HTPC user purchases his equipment. No one likes having ten fans spinning just to cool a system that's playing your latest movies or TV shows. Less power consumption means less heat which in turn means less requirement for active cooling.

There only a few chipsets in my opinion today that are worth looking at. These are the AMD 780G/790GX, Intel G45, and the Nvidia 8200/8300 or 9300/9400. All of these chipsets have video acceleration for common video codecs like mpeg2, VC-1, and h.264, have HDMI connectivity for audio and video, and strive for low power consumption. The AMD 780G/790GX seems to be the most mature, which is natural since it has been on the market the longest. However, it lacks multi-channel LPCM support which can be a show stopper for a lot of HTPC users. See this good high level overview of why LPCM is important @Anandtech "Understanding 8-channel LPCM over HDMI". If getting the very best audio from your system for Blu-ray/HD-DVD collection, then this is likely important for you, it is for me. If regular Dolby Digital or DTS from DVD's is good enough, then the 780G/790GX chipsets merit your serious consideration. For the rest of us, the Intel G45 and Nvidia 8200/8300 are our best options. The Nvidia 9300/9400 release should be in the next few weeks. Both the G45 and 8200/8300 have been around for quite some time, I personally wouldn't call either chipset very mature but they each have their pros and cons. In general, the G45 doesn't support 1080p@24Hz, adheres strictly to the EDID data of your HDMI devices, and currently has a repeater bug where it just won't play a Bluray when you're connected to a receiver. The EDID adherence only affects devices that have odd interpretations of the EDID standard like older Denon receivers. The 8200/8300 on the other hand doesn't seem to support 5.1 LPCM only 7.1 LPCM and seems to be hit and miss with CPU choice in order to get smooth Blu-ray playback. I personally try to choose my parts on bang for the buck, and therefore like to buy the cheaper cpu solution that gets the job done. I can get away with this because of my usage patterns, I don't use postprocessing and only use the HTPC for media playback and not encoding. My experience with the 8200/8300 has left me feeling that Nvidia doesn't really care too much about it whereas Intel seems be updating the G45 constantly yet claims that they can't offer 1080p@24hz.

The new kid on the block is the Nvidia 9300/9400 chipset, this is basically an Intel CPU version of the 8200/8300. However, I'm hoping that Nvidia support will be better with this chipset since it will be in widespread use with the updatedApple Macbook. If I had to pull the trigger today, I'd look at the G45 with a E5200 or E7200 cpu, or an Nvidia 8200 with a 4850e or X3 Phenom cpu. The 4850e may be a gamble however according to some 8200 users. If my purchase wasn't for a month or two I'd definitely wait to see how the Nvidia 9300 turns out.

StOkEd

PS. Looks like Cyberlink released a patch to address the G45 repeater bug Cyberlink PowerDVD8 build 2021a Update