over my head trying to find right video card....

[so]

my eye caught ad for the new ATI Radeon x1800 XL which indicated that you could record direct from tv to dvd....pause live tv...record vhs directly to dvd. this was exactly what i was wanting! however....when i received the video card the box noted that a X16 Lane PPCI Express slot and a crossfire ready mobo was needed.

from what i have read today it appears that crossfire is pretty new technology, so i am sure that my Intel Desktop Board (D865PERL) will not accomodate this video card.

is there some other video card that WILL do the above (with great quality) without me having to rebuild my pc? price isnt as much of my concern as the end results.

thanks in advance for any assistance!

[timmus]

I second the request for information.... I used the Videohelp Lists and narrowed my sights down to an ATI Radeon 7200.... only to find out that the reviews are a few years old and the card is long out of production. My requirements are exactly like so's (I have a 5-year old PIII, nothing fancy, and no firewire).

[redwudz]

I agree, they don't always make it clear that some graphics cards are PCI-E types. ATI, especially seems to make it complicated to sort them out at their site.

And our 'Capture Cards' page doesn't have a separate listing for PCI-E, just PCI.

However, at least in the case of timmus who seems to have an older computer, I would suggest looking into the Hauppauge 250. It's has a hardware MPEG-2 converter that should work fine for an older computer.

A more or less equivalent ATI card might be the ATI TV Wonder Elite.

Software MPEG-2 conversion on the fly needs a very fast CPU, and strains the resources of many computers, especially below 2Ghz CPU speeds.

If you really want a capture card with software encoding, look to lordsmurf's site:http://digitalfaq.com/.

He also has a lot of general information on video capturing and ATI video cards.

[edDV]

I agree, they don't always make it clear that some graphics cards are PCI-E types. ATI, especially seems to make it complicated to sort them out at their site.

And our 'Capture Cards' page doesn't have a separate listing for PCI-E, just PCI.

However, at least in the case of timmus who seems to have an older computer, I would suggest looking into the Hauppauge 250. It's has a hardware MPEG-2 converter that should work fine for an older computer.

A more or less equivalent ATI card might be the ATI TV Wonder Elite.

Software MPEG-2 conversion on the fly needs a very fast CPU, and strains the resources of many computers, especially below 2Ghz CPU speeds.

If you really want a capture card with software encoding, look to lordsmurf's site:http://digitalfaq.com/.

He also has a lot of general information on video capturing and ATI video cards.

I agree the Hauppauge PVR-250, et. al. will take almost all of the load off the CPU. The X-NNN series cards from ATI require the latest PCI-express type motherboards. In the middle are the All-In-Wonder 9xxx cards that share the load in a AGP motherboard and do a good hardware/software load share for a P4 class machine.

ATI also has value All-In-Wonder cards intended for PIII and slower P4 machines. These were labeled 7xxx series but that has changed recently.

see http://digitalfaq.com/