Advice for pretty basic HTPC graphics card

[Hippogriff]

Hi all,

I would really appreciate a quick bit of advice sifting through a selection of seemingly similar cards on offer at much the same price, all are fan-less, all are low-profile and all come bundled with half-height brackets... so, what should I be selecting from the following cards that will go into my HTPC and replace an ageing Radeon?

1) ASUS GT520, 1GB
2) ASUS GT610, 2GB
3) ASUS HD5450, 512MB
4) ASUS HD6450, 1GB

I'm not a hard core gamer, but my HTPC is mainly used an OpenGL application I wrote to play music, so that being ultra smooth would be fantastic, it loads of lot of Artist Images into memory on start-up so I was thinking the GT610 with 2GB. I really want the card for HDMI out, more than anything else. I guess that I've been out of the market for some time as everything seems to be made (branded by?) by ASUS nowadays.

If there were any more options / recommendations - low-profile, fan-less, not too hungry on power - then I would consider them too.

Cheers, Hippo

[ShyguyXPC]

Asus isn't the only brand out there, but they do make a lot of crap.


MSI, XFX, EVGA, Gigabyte, Zotac, Galaxy, Palit, Sapphire, Powercolor, HIS, Visiontek, Diamond, ECS, PNY, Sparkle, Jaton, Gainward, Inno3D, and countless other brands all make cards still.



Not sure where you are, if you are in the US, then this would be a good low profile, fanless card.

Newegg.com - HIS Silence H657HJ1G Radeon HD 6570 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card

better than any of the choices above.

Could even be used for light 3D gaming.

[Hippogriff]

I purchased an ASUS HD 6450 SILENT on impulse and it seems to be working out fine for my purposes with this HTPC.