Quick chipset and vid card question requarding HDMI 5.1 and 7.1 capabilities

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jake21

Limp Gawd
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Sep 3, 2005
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I will soon be getting a new mobo for my HTPC I'm building and it will have the AMD 785G chipset that does NOT have 7.1 LPCM capability through hdmi, only 5.1.

I will be purchasing the Gigabyte ATI 4550 vid card for the rig

So here is my question. Although the onboard chipset is not 7.1 capable through hdmi, will the 4550 have 7.1 hdmi capability on this mobo? Or will the mobo's chipset hold it back to 5.1 still?

Thanks in advance!
~Jake
 
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I've looked and I can't see anything about the audio on this card. However, the onboard sound won't have anything to do with the sound on the video card unless there's some sort of hardware conflict.
 
I believe the only 5.1+ LPCM capable cards are the nVidia 8200/8300 IGP's and the ATI 5x series cards.
 
danman said:
I believe the only 5.1+ LPCM capable cards are the nVidia 8200/8300 IGP's and the ATI 5x series cards.
Click to expand...

Wrong. All the 4xxx series ATI desktop GPU's are capable of 7.1 LPCM. They can also bitstream plain DTS and AC3. The 4xxx and 5xxx series cards have a realtek audio chip on them and they do all the audio processing. So you'll have to output the sound via the DVI to HDMI adapter thats included with the card. The realtek chips also support EAX1 and EAX2 with an application you can get from their site.
 
SeegsElite said:
Wrong. All the 4xxx series ATI desktop GPU's are capable of 7.1 LPCM. They can also bitstream plain DTS and AC3. The 4xxx and 5xxx series cards have a realtek audio chip on them and they do all the audio processing. So you'll have to output the sound via the DVI to HDMI adapter thats included with the card. The realtek chips also support EAX1 and EAX2 with an application you can get from their site.
Click to expand...

+1

The 8200/8300/9200/9300 will all do 7.1 LCPM, but the 4xxx and 5xxx cards do everything mentioned above. Either way will work for you.

That 4550 is a good buy with the MIR, otherwise the ASUS 4350 is a good deal too with that monster passive heatsink.
 
I dont think the ATI 4x cards support PAP so they wont work for HD audio w/ blu-ray.
 
danman said:
I dont think the ATI 4x cards support PAP so they wont work for HD audio w/ blu-ray.
Click to expand...

Correct, for the loss less codecs you would have to get a 5xxx series card and not all of them can do it out of the box.
 
So whats my best bet on a card thats cheap, passive cooled, runs HD and bluray fine, and has TrueHD 7.1?
 
Here is a good, although dated, comparison. It hasn't been updated with info to the ATI 5xxx series.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1093445

Honestly there isn't a great solution out there yet IMO. You could look at using the Asus Xonar audio cards though and pairing that with whatever video card you want.

Personally I'm sticking with a separate bluray player and using the htpc for streaming dvd rips and non-HD audio bluray rips. For any movie that I want to hear the HD audio track I play it on the bluray player. Atleast until the htpc audio scene sorts itself out a little better.
 
jake21 said:
So whats my best bet on a card thats cheap, passive cooled, runs HD and bluray fine, and has TrueHD 7.1?
Click to expand...

5750 or no hd audio. If I were you, I'd get the 4550 and wait until a better true-hd audio solution presents itself.
 
The 4XXX series cards will do 7.1 LPCM, which is uncompressed audio, and actually sounds damn good! IIRC both PowerDVD and TMT downsample however.
 
jake21 said:
So whats my best bet on a card thats cheap, passive cooled, runs HD and bluray fine, and has TrueHD 7.1?
Click to expand...

There are no passively cooled cards that do the Dolby True HD/DTS-HD. You're going to have to get a 5xxx series card. Some will do it out of the box and others will require a firmware update. No 4xxx series cards do True HD/DTD-HD, I have yet to see a 5xxx series card that is passively cooled. I could be wrong, but I highly doubt it.

You could always go with the A-Tech Fab HeatSync 7000 case and then you can make pretty much any card passively cooled.
 
So, none of the other cards do TrueHD or DTS-MA.. period??

Or none of them will bitstream the HD audio??

(in other words, will any of them onboard decode the HD audio and send via LPCM?)


EDIT: Btw, this is exactly why I prefer to have bitstream instead of LPCM.
Some have said the only difference is that the AVR will illuminate the mode lights with bitstream.
Well at least those lights tell you what you are getting. With LPCM, we have no proof if the HTPC is actually sending the proper audio format.
Had I not read this thread (and several others), I would have just trusted that my HTPC was giving me HD audio with my BD movies.
:rolleyes:
 
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wjogert said:
So, none of the other cards do TrueHD or DTS-MA.. period??

Or none of them will bitstream the HD audio??

(in other words, will any of them onboard decode the HD audio and send via LPCM?)


EDIT: Btw, this is exactly why I prefer to have bitstream instead of LPCM.
Some have said the only difference is that the AVR will illuminate the mode lights with bitstream.
Well at least those lights tell you what you are getting. With LPCM, we have no proof if the HTPC is actually sending the proper audio format.
Had I not read this thread (and several others), I would have just trusted that my HTPC was giving me HD audio with my BD movies.
:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

The 5xxx series bitstreams. The 4xxx sends Uncompressed LPCM. Both of these in the end will give you the SAME audio. Period. If you're looking for TrueHD decoding support look no further then FFDShow Audio Decoder.
 
Its not the same. PDVD/TMT will downsample the audio to 16 bit is no PAP is available.
 
So, just to clarify... the earlier ATI HD cards, say 3850/3870... will output only 5.1, correct??
PCM, LPCM, or bitstream?

And 4850/4870 will do 7.1, LPCM only? Is bitstream a selectable option if you choose 5.1?
 
"The 8200/8300/9200/9300 will all do 7.1 LCPM"

This issue is so confusing to me. If the 8200 will do 7.1 LCPM does that also mean that it will handle 5.1 LCPM? 5.1 is all I need and I'm running an 8200 chipset. I'm considering buying a 5750 card but I'd rather not if its unnecessary. I'll be running out to a Yamaha RX-V663 AVR that will be driver the Take 5 Pack system (plus a sub to come).

Also, can anyone explain this statement as is relates to my situation?

"The 4xxx sends Uncompressed LPCM. Both of these in the end will give you the SAME audio. Period. If you're looking for TrueHD decoding support look no further then FFDShow Audio Decoder."


Thanks.
 
Feileung said:
"The 8200/8300/9200/9300 will all do 7.1 LCPM"

This issue is so confusing to me. If the 8200 will do 7.1 LCPM does that also mean that it will handle 5.1 LCPM? 5.1 is all I need and I'm running an 8200 chipset. I'm considering buying a 5750 card but I'd rather not if its unnecessary. I'll be running out to a Yamaha RX-V663 AVR that will be driver the Take 5 Pack system (plus a sub to come).

Also, can anyone explain this statement as is relates to my situation?

"The 4xxx sends Uncompressed LPCM. Both of these in the end will give you the SAME audio. Period. If you're looking for TrueHD decoding support look no further then FFDShow Audio Decoder."


Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes, the 4xxx series sends up to 7.1, but also does 5.1 surround. What you have to understand is how compressed audio works. The FFDshow audio decoder simply decompresses the audio to PCM format and then it's sent to your receiver. It is then broken down into single channels, converted into analog sound and then amplified when it's sent to your speakers.

The only thing different when bitstreaming is that compressed sound in the truehd format is sent to your receiver. Then it's decoded to PCM. So you're getting the same exact sound, no matter if you send PCM or bitstream the audio.
 
"Yes, the 4xxx series sends up to 7.1, but also does 5.1 surround."

Would you say that this holds true for the 8200 chipset as well? I'm trying to make sense of something I read on another forum.

Does this rule out what you were saying or can you suggest a way to work around this problem?

"The integrated HDMI audio device supports only stereo and 7.1 speakers. So, for example, if you use madFlac + WASAPI exclusive mode and try to play 5.1 FLAC audio, you will see an error message (as the driver receives 5.1 that it does not support). ffdshow with upmixing to 7.1 + WASAPI exclusive mode is OK. Why WASAPI exclusive for LPCM."
 
I've never personally used the 8200 chipset, but I have heard from many people that it does output 5.1. It could be that who ever you quoted was using old drivers and got an error message. I would imagine that user was using Vista. If you're running Windows 7 and the latest drivers it should work flawlessly.
 
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