Low Profile Choices
#1
All;

I'm planning on moving my apple TV2 to the bedroom, and will be repurposing my existing server for xbmc.

I need to pick up a low profile card to fit my case; wondering about opinions.

I'd like to have a passive / fanless card; since this is going to be sitting in my living room. I don't intend to do a TON of gaming on this thing, and certainly nothing demanding, but being able to run something a handful of years old would be pretty awesome (thinking like Half-Life 2 / Portal on low settings, not a whole lot more then that). Will honestly end up being mostly emulators.

I'm looking at GeForce 210, GT 520 with 1GB memory, and GT 520 with 2GB of memory. There's a $10 difference between each step "up".

Is there that much of a difference between the three? Or, perhaps more accurately, how much of a difference will I notice between the 210 and the 520, or with that double amount of RAM? Is it worth the extra $20? I'm on a REALLY tight budget, so while $20 isn't much most of the time, I need to spend the absolute least I can get away with.

I suppose I should verify these will play HD movies (H.264), as well as pass audio via HDMI, right? That is more or less the critical piece, after all. I'm not doing any blu-ray decoding or anything. In fact, I don't even have an optical drive on this box.

Thanks in advance!
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#2
Long weekend is over; anyone have any help for me? Please? Smile
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#3
I had a G210 with 1GB of memory and it played H.264 mkv files without any trouble. Audio pass through over HDMI worked perfectly as well. I think all you really need for HTPC duty is 512MB of memory on the GPU so 2GB is way overkill.

If you are running windows you can look at an ATI HD5450. I have one in my HTPC right now and it works well.
HTPC: Win 7 Home 64-bit | MB | CPU | GPU | RAM | Case | PSU | Tuner | HDDs: OS, Media | DVD Burner | Remote
Media server: unraid 4.7 | CPU | MB | RAM | Case | PSU | HDDs: Parity-2TB, Data-2x2TB
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#4
I read that 2GB RAM on these slow cards is nonsense as they are just not fast enough to process this amount of data (not sure if I got this right). Anyway 1GB should be more than enough. No need to spend more money for 2 GB.

I have a passive GT520 myself and it is ok for HTPC tasks and light gaming (e.g. Fifa 12 and Dirt 3). But it really gets hot. Especially when playing Dirt 3 it goes up to 90-100 C. With Fifa 12 it stays at 75 C, so maybe it is ok for Half Life and emulators.

Other cards that are recommended quite frequently are HD6450 or GT430.
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