[protocol77]

hi up until now I have been mostly using boards with AMD Radeon Graphics so for example my current htpc has HD 6850 the previous was 4250 (I think)

I am now looking at building another htpc for my house and this time for a change I have decided to go with an intel build but I have no experience in using intel cpu's with integrated graphics the boards I am looking at are saying HD2500/4000 or HD 2000 or similar


how do these compare with the Radeon ones I personally find Radeon Numbering on models a lot easier to keep track of this is also in regards to Nvidia cards you can have two cards with two different numbers and you would think the one with the highest number would be the latest and greatest but it might be the opposite and the one with the lower number might be the newer card

at least it Radeon the numbers go up with each version so it is easier to see how much more developed the next card is based on model number


basically what is the model scale for both Intel Onboard graphics and also the same for NVidia how can I tell between two different cards what is the best until now I have been looking for somewhere on the box or on the specs page to see what version of directx it has as a guide if it has direct x 10.1 or direct x 11.0

[Ned Scott]

For XBMC my own personal guide is this: never touch AMD, go with the cheapest card that does hardware video decoding. Typically speaking, as far as not having video decoding issues, it sounds like Nvidia is slightly better Intel. For the most part, XBMC doesn't care one bit, nor will it behave any differently, between onboard intel HD 2000 and the most expensive AMD/NVIDIA you can find. Not having bugs is more important than raw power, and for that you can only use user reviews.