Many with an interest in computers have at least thought of getting a computer dedicated for the TV and living room. The interest for so called HTPCs or Media Center PCs is growing and many have already taken the step and have home cinemas with HTPC as the hub. The perhaps most important choice when building an HTPC is often the graphics card, should you go simple and cheap, or perhaps even with an integrated solutions, or perhaps a bigger, more expensive and hotter card that can also do 3D games?
You often have to choose between these three, but how poor at gaming are the entry-level graphics cards really? This is something X-bit Labs has investigated with several popular HTPC graphics cards, but also measured power consumption and evaluated the image quality.
All is relative of course, but a passive cooled Radeon HD 4650 graphics card for less than $70 actually delivers playable performance in many of the latest games, which might come as a surprise to many.
The entry-level solutions like the PowerColor SCS3 HD4650 512MB DDR2 are rather disappointing in 1080p mode even if you turn 4x FSAA off. On the other hand, these cards can deliver comfortable performance in such games as Call of Duty: World at War, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Devil May Cry 4, Race Driver: GRID and X³: Terran Conflict. Not bad for entry-level products!
Very interesting reading for those who are planning to build a HTPC and is not certain about the graphics card.
:: Gaming on HTPC: Inexpensive Graphics Cards Performance Review
