Reply 20 of 58, by shamino
- Rank
- l33t
This isn't really addressing the subject of 3D, but I like the PCI 8400GS(*) because it can be used to accelerate H.264 video playback. It might be the cheapest available PCI card that can do that. Requires using a player that supports the feature though (MPC-BE should work, I tested it under linux in some other player whose name I don't remember).
Regardless of CPU speed, this is mandatory to watch such videos on a PCI system because a standard 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus simply isn't fast enough to stream uncompressed HD video. It needs to be sent to the card as compressed data.
I imagine the 8400GS is also quite decent in games, but not as fast as some of the last PCI cards that were made.
* = NVidia made 2 different GPUs that were both used in "8400GS" cards. The older one doesn't do H.264, the later one does. I think cards with 512MB RAM reliably have the later GPU.
Subjectively speaking, I think the 8400GS might be the last NVidia PCI card that I would call "fairly common" which implies decent pricing and some bang for the buck. Models beyond that get pretty rare. So I would call the PCI 8400GS an underrated card.
Old discussions on here have said the (Zotac?) GT430 is the fastest PCI card. I think it's closest rivals are a 9400GT (maybe a 9500GT). None of those are cheap though unless a seller doesn't know why it's unique and prices them like common cards.
The GT520/610 have a slower memory interface than the 430, but I don't know if they sell any cheaper. All are probably too expensive to bother with.
Such cards might be a nice find for a late P4 which only has PCI slots, but only if you get lucky on the price or you had a good reason for not using a different motherboard.
For a while I thought it would be interesting to use a late PCI card in my Opteron server so that it could double as a usable desktop, but I never actually did it.