Does anyone have first hand experience using this card for HD playback? Does it offload any of the work from the CPU with H.264(hd-dvd), x.264(mkv), AVI (xvid) or Mpeg2(TS)? I'm talking first hand experience with the AGP card only. We all know how well the PCI-E card does.

bump. anyone?

No firsthand experience. It's something I want to test for tom's in the next AVIVO review.
I've heard second hand it might not work, tho.

thanks, i heard the same thing. some people think its a driver problem.. others think AGP 8X doesnt provide enough bandwith.
its all speculation i suppose.

I have a HD2600XT AGP 256MB DDR3, and it takes huge offload from the CPU, but i just can't get it working in the games. If you are going to watch movies it is ok, but if you wont to play games, and don't think so. Better to get PCI-E and used motherboard with PCI-E.

if ya think agp 8x doesnt have the bandwidth, then u have to wonder about this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/0 [...] g_chipset/

what is the onboard video bandwidth? isnt agp better? now if ya look at the charts comparing agp to pci-e u will see no difference, but the pci-e is bi-directional and should theoreticly be over twice as fast, but it is not. there is little or no noticeable difference when u are using a 32bit operating system.

so your question, can be answered by your system settings or your video card drivers, ati agp card have a problem when fast writes is enabled. there is a fix.

the hd2600 is a good card and usually the problem lies with installation of the drivers.

try this adviser:

http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/sup [...] gnosis.jsp