I assembled a HTPC using MSI 785GTM-E45 motherboard and AMD Athlon II X3 440 CPU. I choose this combo mainly because it was on sale but also because I thought the MSI motherboard supports HD audio formats through on board HDMI port. Although reading about the AMD 785 chipset elsewhere indicates clearly the chipset is not capable of supporting HD audio, I thought by reading MSI’s web site which claim “True Blu-ray Audio Support”, MSI may implement some off chipset solutions. Well, as it turns out, they just meant they support “True Blu-ray Audio” thought analog outputs. While not exactly false advertisement, I don’t think they are really hones either. In fact, not only the HDMI does not support HD audio, the default driver that came with the board only support 2 ch. LPCM output. Talk about disappointment. Even after download different driver from Realtek, the HDMI port only supports the basic none HD audio DTS and DD core. Not really an acceptable solution for today’s HTPC.
To solve the lack of HD audio problem, it is obvious I need to add a graphics card that has the following features,
- Has HDMI port.
- Has hardware HD video decoding function so playback of HD video contents such as HD DVD or Blu-Ray or HDTV will not burden the CPU.
- Support HD audio streams, DTS-HD MA, DD TrueHD and 8 ch. LPCM in particular pass though HDMI port.
- Cost less than $60
Being able to play PC games on the other hand is not a requirement to me. None of the current Nvidia cards in this price range meet the requirement. The best they can do is to support 8 ch. LPCM which is not acceptable. The ATI on the other hand has a number of cards fit the requirement. I choose the PowerColor AX5450 with 512MB of DDR3 memory because ATI 5450 is a newer chip that consume less power and fanless which means no fan noises. Priced around $40 is also a big plus.
The package of the card looks more like a video game box than graphics card and the content is bare minimum. Even the CD looks like a generic ATI CD without any PowerColor added content.
Installation does require either temporary adding a second monitor or switch connection from the TV to regular monitor. This is because my TV only supports 1080i and that is not in the Windows’ generic monitor resolutions. After the first boot up and sign on to Windows, in this case, Windows 7 will pick up the card and associated it with the right driver, including the HD Fury driver I made for the 1080i resolution. Once this is done, the second monitor is not required.
Windows 7’s Aero score jumped from 3.8 of motherboard’s ATI 4200 to 5.0. But compares to GeForce 9300’s 4.7, this really wasn’t that great. HD DVD and Blu-Ray video play back are smooth as expected are smooth but then even the motherboard’s ATI 4200 is capable smooth playback of HD videos.
Audio playback through HDMI however, did not go well. The A/V receiver’s light indicates I only got 2 ch. LPCM out of the new card. Some thing was not right. As it turns out, it was motherboard’s Realtek HDMI driver is interfering. I need to completely uninstall the Realtek’s HDMI driver and then install ATI’s HDMI driver. Once set correctly, my receiver now receives the proper DTS-HD MA and DD TrueHD streams over the HDMI.
As a side note, some people complained that if HDTV resolution is selected, the ATI driver will default to scale the graphics image to 95% to compensate possible overscan. While I did not encounter this problem, I actually tried manually to scale the image down a bit to see if I can use this function to compensate HD Fury’ left shift problem. Well, it sorts of works but in return I now have a sizeable black bar on the right and less noticeable on top and bottom. Not very desirable tradeoff to say the least so I change it back and just to resign to live with HD Fury’s lift shift problem.
The ATI 5450 is a great low cost solution for HTPC.
Pro:
- Low cost. Current retail is about $40-$50.
- Fanless. No fan noises.
- Have HDMI, DVI and VGA ports.
- Low power consumptions. Does not require additional PCI power.
- Support HD audio format such as DTS-HD MA and DD TrueHD pass through HDMI port.
Con:
- Performance for none media video related regular graphics function is on the low side. 5.0 for Windows 7 Aero score is just a little than IGP like GeForce 9300.
- The PowerColor version is very barebone.
As whole, I am very happy with the ATI 5450 for HTPC. In fact, because most of the A/V decoding job of a HTPC is handled by this card, a lesser motherboard and CPU will do. There is no need or even desirable to get a motherboard with on board video for example. The Athlon II X3 is overkill for the job too. Even an old Althon 64 5200+ will do. ATI 5450 is the core of an inexpensive yet flexible and powerful modern HTPC.