ATI Radeon 8200 v NVidia GeForce 8200

[mikdude]

i am looking to build my first HTPC and based on comments here have decided to go for an AMD 780G based motherboard. The Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H appears to very highly rated and it comes with the ATI 3200 graphics. However, some have suggested the Asus motherboard with inbuilt GeForce is also quite good.

I am wondering if anyone has done a comparison between the two praphics cards and can advise which they think is better. I will be hooking the HTPC to a 47 inch Full HD LCD screen and may also play some blu-ray movies through it. However, the primary use, intially, will be to watch and record FTA tv and also web browsing.

Once i am able to decide on the motherboard i can then look to finalise my other components.

[gregorys]

Hi Mikdude,
Yesterday I upgraded my son's PC with the following

- Asus M3N-H/HDMI (GeForce 8300)
- AMD X3 Phenom 8450
- 2 X 1GB DDR 2 10066 RAM (G-skill)

The mother board comes with integrated GeForce 8300. It was easy to set up and everything went smootly without any complications. Although it was not used as a media center PC, it ran very quitely and was cool eventhough it was on for hours while we were installing the OS (Vista 32 bit) and all the software.

Runs super fast, my son's very happy with it. My son uses it mainly for Photoshop, and 3D Max animation. Was previouly Intel Celeron 2.8 ghz/ 1gb ram and too slow.

I liked it because it came with integrated HDMI output and digital coaxial output on the rear panel. Also comes with HDMI to DVI adaptor which I can use to connect to existing LCD monitor. Great mobo , I'm thinking of using it for my media center PC that I'm planning to build. The only problem is that my amp only accepts component video . I'm still looking for a solution to this before I start.

Regards