Media Center GFX card

[dfgh11]

Hi,

Just looking for any suggestions on what graphics card to get for a media center pc, capable of handling HD content as best as possible, without breaking the bank. I was going to go for a nvidia 6800XT 128MB AGP with pure video. A wise choice?

[rallynavvie]

My 6600GT does just fine for recorded HD content so I would guess the 6800 series would work just fine. And before the jackals appear: 128MB is plenty for a video output card, you only need more VRAM if you're gaming or working with a lot of 3D or vectors. Which HD capture device are you using?

Just realized you're a PC-DL user! Are you using that as your HTPC? I recently retired my DH800 to Windows MCE and it does splendidly. Plus since it's still basically XP Pro I can do the occasional video job that I retired it from doing, or game, or do anything else. My DN800-SLI is now out of the rack and into a desktop case as my primary video/DCC workstation now, though I miss burning my Prestonias all night

[ROF]

I can recommend the 6800 for your purposes. It is a capable GPU at a reasonable price.

[dfgh11]

My 6600GT does just fine for recorded HD content so I would guess the 6800 series would work just fine. And before the jackals appear: 128MB is plenty for a video output card, you only need more VRAM if you're gaming or working with a lot of 3D or vectors. Which HD capture device are you using?

Just realized you're a PC-DL user! Are you using that as your HTPC? I recently retired my DH800 to Windows MCE and it does splendidly. Plus since it's still basically XP Pro I can do the occasional video job that I retired it from doing, or game, or do anything else. My DN800-SLI is now out of the rack and into a desktop case as my primary video/DCC workstation now, though I miss burning my Prestonias all night

Well I plan to retire mine too media center one day too or sell it and upgrade. However for now, it has taken on the role as my main computer, after the failing of my athlon system, due to god knows what.My HTPC will be comprised of, a bunch of parts being given to me, which include a P4 S478 3ghz and 512 of RAM the rest of yet is uknown. I did want to try and get a S478 PCI E motherboard but that has proved quite some task, so I'll probably end up sticking with the board I'm given- which I'm pretty sure is AGP 8x. I haven't made my mind up on any HD capture device as of yet, so any suggestions will be appreciated.

[rallynavvie]

I don't think there are any 478 boards that support PCI-E simply because the 9xx chipsets were never supported with it. If there are any out there they'd probably be bridging and I certainly wouldn't want to have any part of that.

There still aren't terribly many HD tuners on the market. I know the ATi one has been working well for a lot of people even though it was one of the first on the market. There used to be a great user website for MCE at www.thegreenbutton.com but they have been down off and on for the past month. Or try the HTPC forum here.

I wouldn't sell that PC-DL. If it's being OCed (like so many of them are) just bring it back to stock speeds and use it as a file server. I still have my first SMP rig, a Tyan 2460, doing just that and it's still an excellent performer. With dual-core on the market and quad-core coming up there are some exciting times ahead for upgrading. I'm looking to a dual socket quad-core board next spring sometime once they've had time to mature.

[ViRaL1]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Description=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&OEMMark...ubCategory=280

Not a lot of options.

[edDV]

Don't spend too much today. The current cards are good for MPeg2 and have some acceleration for MPeg4 but not full hardware decoding. As such these cards can handle HDTV tuner MPeg2_TS streams but not HD DVD, etc. with VC-1 encoding or full decode of h.264. The CPU will still have to do the rest of the work.

Future cards will add support for MPeg2 and MPeg4 encoding acceleration and later full hardware MPeg2 and MPeg4 encoding.

[rallynavvie]

I'm not gonna hold my breath. You never know, HD-DVD or even BluRay may go the way of Divx, the original Divx.

At any rate if you're using a 3.0 P4 for an HTPC alone you shouldn't have to worry about using the processor for some software decoding capabilities. And if you are building on AGP architecture then I doubt they'll be releasing anything more than what is out now.

On the bright side you can get some good deals on existing AGP video cards.

[ViRaL1]

I miss my old Divx player. It was the only player I've had / come across that will actually play my CDs backwards. I'm sure there are others out there, I just haven't seen them.

[dfgh11]

Ok, I'm playing the video back (1080i with VLC) through my HDTV and it's coming out a little jerky, and occasionally, I can see the interlace lines, would Nvidia pure video correct this?

[edDV]

Ok, I'm playing the video back (1080i with VLC) through my HDTV and it's coming out a little jerky, and occasionally, I can see the interlace lines, would Nvidia pure video correct this?

It should if the player supports the NVidia Purevideo hardware decoding acceleration.

VLC is mostly using software decoding and deinterlacing. By definition it is struggling to keep up and various "deinterlace" modes load the CPU over a wide range. Default "discard" tosses a field for a quick 540p/29.97*. This may be fine for computer display but not what you want for output to a good HDTV. True deinterlace modes will load the CPU and cause jerkyness in playback if the CPU can't keep up.\


* 1080i -> 540p/29.97 also cuts motion resolution by half.

[dfgh11]

Pure video seems to work, but only with WMP. Things were going fine in windows media classic but then I started to tweak and now it plays an off center cropped picture on my TV. I would settle for WMP, however, whenever you skip through it's pauses and then plays the video extremely fast and it seems to have audio sync problems.