[sarlan19]

Hi all,

I'm about to bite the bullet on a high end video card, either a GeForce 780 or an Amd Radeon r9 290x. I currently own a amd Radeon hd 7870 that works well with my htpc under win7. I use it to output 5.1 hd sound to my onkyo receiver. Xbmc is up to date with the last official build (never do nighlies)

What I want to know is if anybody had any issue with sound output with either of these cards ? Also if you know any other issues with those cards regarding xbmc (not gaming) please let me know.

[protocol77]

i can't comment on these cards in particular but as for which brand if you are just using this machine for watching content and not things like high end gaming both would be good i would think

If you plan to continue using Windows for your HTPC then either should work fine because there should be plenty of drivers available however if you want to use something like XBMCBuntu or Openelec or any sort of linux install i would be mindful that in the past some AMD cards have had driver support dropped i know a friends machine i had to upgrade because they were running a radeon 4850 (i think been a while might have been 4350) and they were using it with an earlier Eden version of Openelec and a few later versions it couldn't be updated because there was no driver support

so i bought them a Nvidia GeForce 210 and put it in there and they are currently using it with 4.0.7 of Openelec which has just been released (Gotham Build)

[RaggSokk3n]

Since there's no reason why you would use a gpu like that on a Linux setup any of those will be fine. Amd has been great lately and pricing is fair. Nvidia is the choice for sli not that you'll need it.
The only issue I can see is the onkyo reciever, they're known for issues with htpcs. (not recognizing video)

But to be perfectly honest you're wasting your money, 1080p gaming will be wasted on a high end gpu. Get a 280x instead, they're at least half the price of the 290x and 780

[sarlan19]

Thanks for the answer guys.

I'm definitely not looking for sli or xfire. So amd it is.

As for the 280x, I am looking to future proof a bit and I'm hoping to run witcher 3 and gtaV and max settings and 60fps. For 50$ difference between a 280x and 290x, I think it's worth it.