GigaByte GIGA-BYTE GeForce 8500 GT Graphics Card

Good card for the money

Strengths: Low price, HDCP compatible, fan-less.

Weakness: Available drivers didn't support HD-DVD natively Fan-less.

This card was well worth the low introduction price considering it is DirectX 10 compatible and HDCP compliant. The Windows drivers available at the time of writing were not known to PowerDVD to be HDCP compliant, so HD content would not render without a 3rd party application like AnyDVD. Make sure to add extra cooling to your system if you use this card. Although it's fan-less, it needs some...

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Good for HTPC

Strengths: Silent, fast, HDCP

Weakness: Gets very hot, drivers not perfected, dvi not hdmi

This is a very respectable video card that I have been using with great success on my 42" LCD TV as an HTPC with Vista Media Center. It gets the job done well, high definition content looks amazing with this graphics card. Haven't tried blu-ray or hd-dvd, so I can't comment on that. While it is noiseless, it does tend to get pretty hot. This hasn't affected the performance of the card yet, so its...

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Weak game performance.

Strengths: Passive cooler, Directx10

Weakness: Horrible gaming performance

Brought this card, due to lack of budget at the time. Regretted the choice, this card is really weak in games, the only good thing is the passive cooler and the Directx 10.

Nice card for HD video watching, games are so so

Strengths: HDCP capable for Blue Ray/HD DVD, offloads most of H.264 encode to help speed up system, strong DVD/video support, free Dark Crusade game is fun, no fan = silent, composite HDTV out on module, quality

Weakness: Still a bit pricey for a HTPC card which is what I am using it for. The heatsink feels a bit loose on the card. Huge card, make sure it will fit your case especially if you are using in a HTPC.

This is a great card for HTPC use. For gaming, I would suggest the 8600GT or higher as this card is a bit sluggish on higher resolution for gameplay. As a card for a high-end HTPC, this one will do fine, you won't get any home theater benefit from the higher end cards.

Great card for HTPC

Strengths: Hardware H.264, HDCP, fanless

Weakness: Slow for 3D games, a bit hot.

The Gigabyte 8500GT is probably the best card for HTPC builders today. It supports HDCP, so that you can play protected HD contents over HDCP capable monitors. It almost completely offloads H.264 decoding from CPU. So you no longer need a super fast CPU to play HD-DVD or Blu-Rays. It doesn't have a fan, so it's totally silent. The GPU temperature in my case is ~74C idle. Vista gives it 4.8 for 2D...

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