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  1. Member
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
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    United Kingdom
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    Hi guys, sorry to just throw questions at you with my first post, but I'm a bit flooded with information at the moment, and need some guidance really.

    I think it's time I got a new graphics card - I have an ATI Radeon 9800 SE, but it seems a bit buggy and sometimes freezes when watching DVDs (which is, as you can imagine, very irritating). So I thought, I might a new one.

    However, now that I'm thinking about it, I'd quite like a card that lets me capture TV, and also, would let me use my PC monitor to play games console games on (N64, Gamecube etc). It saves having two screens in my room.

    Anyway, I'm a bit lost on what I'm really looking for. I suppose I want a decent graphics card with RF and S-Video in. Does it need some sort of Hardware decoder as well? And some sort of tuner? It has to be AGP, and hope I'm not asking too much, but also I don't want to have to pay the Earth for this.

    Am I looking for something like the ATI All-in-Wonder card? What card would people reccomend?

    Thanks a lot guys - I really am a bit lost with what I'm looking for.
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  2. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    Apr 2004
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    Miskatonic U
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    I would consider carefully whether or not it is worth throwing money away on an AGP card any more. How long until you upgrade the rest of your system ? PCI-e is the way to go, so if you are upgrading in the next 12 months you might as well hold off. When did you last update your drivers ? What playback software are you using ? These will factor more in the performance of video playback than the hardware.
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  3. Member
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    Jul 2007
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    United Kingdom
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    <<When did you last update your drivers ? What playback software are you using ? These will factor more in the performance of video playback than the hardware.>>

    It's been a continuous uphill struggle - I suspect the card is getting old or has developed a hardware fault. It sometimes overheats on video games as well and crashes out.

    As for drivers, I'm now using the Omega ones rather than the official ones, and they work better, but there are still occasional problems. You have inspired me to play around with my DVD decoder though, so I'll have a play with that and tell you how it went.

    So, do you think I should get a separate TV capture card then? And then, if I can't sort out my graphics card, buy another one of them as well (I think I will be wanting another graphics card before I update my motherboard). Would that be cheaper do you think? I suppose, in the sense that I'd be able to keep the capture card for my next PC (maybe).

    As for a capture card, I can't get freeview where I live at the moment (although presumably one day within the next seven years I'll be getting a digital signal) and I don't have sky. I would, however, like to be able to wire a video player/games console/rf lead up to my PC and get those images on the screen - and be able to record them at good quality.

    What sort of capture card do you think? It would be nice to have one that, in the future, when we are digital, can save the digital stream without encoding it (if that makes sense). That would result in the theoretical best quality for recordings, wouldn't it?
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  4. Member dadrab's Avatar
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    Mar 2006
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    State of Denial, U.S.
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    Well, I don't do games, so I can't speak to that.

    But, for capturing television and ripping VHS onto hard-drive, I have a Hauppauge PVR-350. It works very well and records directly to MPEG2 (via hardware encoding) so I can edit, author and burn to DVD. I'm pretty pleased with it.
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  5. Member Heywould3's Avatar
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    Apr 2002
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    always on the move
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    i have an even older card . im still using the ATI AIW 8500 and my dvd playback is flawless. i use power dvd mostly. there is no reason to upgrade your card unless you want to game more.. ATI has droped their AIW cards so you will have to go with a seprate tuner and video card. there are lots of card out there. it jsut depends on if you want hot gaming and good tv with digital and analog. as was said by guns1inger go with a PCIe video card if you do upgrade and add a pci tuner. hauppauge makes some good ones.. or you could just get a vid card with inputs for the playstation etc.

    P.S.
    If you list what exactly you want to do in order of must have to would be nice but could do without, that would make it easier to give you ideas. like this

    Must game most of newest games.
    must have tv
    HTDV would be nice but not big deal
    DVI out
    in/out

    stuff like that and we can help more
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