[Budget] Media Center/Everyday/Light-gaming PC

[b1gapl]

Maybe the 8600GTS might give a better picture quality, but the X1950PRO will much better for your gaming.

 

[veg1992]

Maybe the 8600GTS might give a better picture quality, but the X1950PRO will much better for your gaming.

this is correct... but since you said light gaming with Crysis and BIoshock and such.... we recommended the x1950pro... otherwise we would have told you to go with an 8600gts because your in a Media Center PC and it comes in handy to have that PureVideo2 engine to have less CPU consumption when your watching streamed or live video

 

[Sora]

Pick which you want really...the X1950PRO is a better gaming card by about as much as the 8600GTS is with HD playback because the 8600 series has PureVideo

 

[maroon1]

Actually the X1950PRO is faster than the 8600GTS even when both are overclocked but I figured you probably wanted DX10.

First: When both are overclocked, 8600GTS would easily outperform X1950pro

Second: The performance of 8600GTS is very close to the X1950pro at stock speeds

Here are some reviews for you

Review 1
Review 2

 

[b1gapl]

Maybe it's the 8600GTS' shading power.

 

[veg1992]

Maybe it's the 8600GTS' shading power.

i think it is... the 8600gts performs with the 7900gs and in shader games the 8600gts can outperform the 7900gt sometimes...

 

[nylax4]

Well yeah I don't want any stuttering when I'm watching content at 720p. And will it be possible to get drivers for the video that let it run at 1280x720 on my widescreen TV(DVI to HDMI cable)? When I use this computer, onboard video, and a VGA cable to the TV I have a picture that always has black bars at any resolution. So is it possible to get 16:9, widescreen resolutions?