Should I upgrade from 6600gt to 8500gt?

[anthtoy]

Hi All,
I have been a bit disappointed of late of my gigabyte 6600gt's ability to de-interlace properly with live tv (tried all the decoders on powerdvd 7 at the moment). I have done a lot of reading and there are suggestions that the something like a MSI 8500gt with HDMI out enables you to select YCC out (instead of RGB) with a big jump in quality. Is this output option available in Windows XP drivers or just Vista?
As MPEG2 I believe is natively YCC, I can understand why colour space conversions to RGB could cause some issues, but it shouldn't if done properly. Has anyone made the jump from a 6600gt to an 8500gt and noticed better de-interlacing and PQ?
The other issue I have wiht the 6600gt is that the heatpipe effectively takes up 3 slots. I know the MSI takes up two slots, but is the back completely flat? That way the heatsink only infringes the other SLI slot and not any of the others.
thanks,
Anthony

[vlad]

Yes go for it.
Something like this:
http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/76957/VI...46200-8866.asp
or any other, but look for DDR3 memory to future proof it.

[logifuse]

Originally Posted by anthtoy

I have done a lot of reading and there are suggestions that the something like a MSI 8500gt with HDMI out enables you to select YCC out (instead of RGB) with a big jump in quality. Is this output option available in Windows XP drivers or just Vista?

Although I haven't tried it myself, I have read (on other forums) that it can be selected in XP. I was researching why it wasn't available on all Nvidia 8xxx cards & it seems that it's tied to the HDMI controller chip on the card - no chip = no YCbCr444. It's not just cards with HDMI connectors on them that have the controller, so some DVI cards will act as HDMI cards, but which ones...... HDMI port is the only way to be completely sure. I've got the MSI 8500GT in my dsesktop PC BTW.

The other issue I have wiht the 6600gt is that the heatpipe effectively takes up 3 slots. I know the MSI takes up two slots, but is the back completely flat? That way the heatsink only infringes the other SLI slot and not any of the others.

Nothing on the back of the card at all - genuine 2 slots. The Gainward that Vlad mentioned is a 2 slot card too (it actually has a 2 slot bracket).

Justin

[anthtoy]

Thanks Guys.
At just over $60 bucks the MSI 8500gt is pretty good value. Do you think I will notice any improvement over the 6600gt though in terms of HD de-interlacing? Any reason to pay another $60 and go to an 8600gt given I very rarely play games on the thing.
thanks,
Anthony

[logifuse]

Originally Posted by anthtoy

Thanks Guys.
At just over $60 bucks the MSI 8500gt is pretty good value. Do you think I will notice any improvement over the 6600gt though in terms of HD de-interlacing? Any reason to pay another $60 and go to an 8600gt given I very rarely play games on the thing.
thanks,
Anthony

I think you should notice a real improvement, but I've only run my 8500GT in Vista, so not certain about MCE2005.

The 8500 & 8600GTs have the same Purevideo HD engine, so there will be no difference when it comes to video playback.

Justin

[anthtoy]

It looks like powerdvd 8 has solved my de-interlace issues and is giving great PQ. I also just discovered you can put a pci-e x 1 card in a pci-e x 16 slot so that should enable me to free up a slot I need. Now thinking of playing with vista (dual boot). Why can't I leave it all alone when it works (almost) perfectly!!

[merovingian]

Originally Posted by logifuse

The 8500 & 8600GTs have the same Purevideo HD engine, so there will be no difference when it comes to video playback.

What you've said is true, at least in terms of the Purevideo features supported by each card. However, these two cards have different GPU cores (G86 versus G84) and significantly different processing capacity (clock rate, stream processors, bandwidth etc). I don't know for sure that this will make any difference to HD (or video in general) processing performance, but my belief is that it does mean that there is potential for the 8600GT to be superior at more complex tasks such as motion-adaptive deinterlacing of truly interlaced material. e.g. AFL on Ten.

I have seen people on AVS forum claim to have seen a difference in the performance of these cards. As I've never compared them myself, I can't speak from personal experience. My feeling is that the difference would be subtle at best, and perhaps only detectable on a large screen viewed at relatively short range.

[CraigMBecket]

Hi anthtoy,

A little off track here but its to help another member.
A bloke on another thread is having trouble with getting HD using a 6600 card, what nvidea drivers are you using it may help him solve the problem.

Craig.

[anthtoy]

I have the latest XP nvidia drivers but have never had trouble getting HD. Can you point me to the thread?

[CraigMBecket]

Hi anthtoy,

Its TV HD Channels Freezes Video but not Audio

Craig.