HP m8120n Media Center Graphics Card Upgrade

[winterwolfes]

I have the HP m8120n Media Center PC. I am trying to get as much out of my set up as I can to capture tv and play it back on my HDTV.

It came with an nvidia 7350. The card only has a DVI and Svideo outputs. I want to have it connected to both my monitor and my HDTV. My monitor only has dvi or vga input which means I have to use the dvi connection for my monitor leaving only the svideo connection for my HDTV.

I want to upgrade the card to something with 2 DVI outputs so I can use a dvi to hdmi cable to my hdtv. I have read that the problem with the m8120n is that it has a week power supply. But I just don't know much about this.

What do I have to do to upgrade my card on this pc? I was thinking of something from the Nvidia 8000 series. Anyone familiar with the power supply on the m8120n and will a card from the 8000 series work with it? If not, how big of a deal is it to upgrade your power supply? If you upgrade the power supply could that cause other conflicts/issues?

Thanks!

[Marvingj]

This is a great card HIS Radeon X1550 Video Card low power intake. For connection hdtv there are connectors out there but very expensive...

[winterwolfes]

This card seems very similar to what i have except with a vga output. this would give me what i need connect-wise, but is it any better that the Nvidia 7350? I just feel like if I am going to change out cards then I should upgrade to the best my pc can support. Does Direct X 10 support make a difference if you don't play games much? As this is a Direct X 9 card like the one I have and want to upgrade.

[Squash]

The Geforce 8600gt might be a good choice. That's what I put into my HP a6152n (very similar to the 8120; I almost went with that over the a6152 but I didn't need the TV tuner. Other than that they're very similar). The 350W power supply is enough to power the 8600gt. The card is powered from the motherboard and doesn't require an additional PCI-E power connector from the PSU.

It has 2 DVI connectors and 1 svideo. The DVIs are the type which also output VGA. Two adapters came with my EVGA 8600GT if you need to use them for VGA (they work, I tried them). Supports HDCP.

They support DX9 and DX10 and hardware H264 acceleration via Cyberlink's Purevideo HD (aka Purevideo2), though with your Q6600 CPU you shouldn't need that; but I tried it just to make sure it works. It does.

Prices start at about $95 at Newegg, depending on how much memory and extras you want.

There's a good post here about upgrading the 8120 with a 8600gt:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/genericContent.do?oid=192239&plckForumPage=ForumDiscuss...d-9d419bfb7e30

ATI makes a card in the same price and performance range (Radeon HD2600), but I don't know anything about it.

Don't know about performance over 7350, but there's lots of charts you can look up. The 8600GT runs modern games like Bioshock fine if you scale back the max settings a little.

DX10 is not worth much yet. They're still working on it. It will be big in the future, though.

[winterwolfes]

That's great! Thanks for the response. I was concerned about the power supply not being enough. I have read people say that about the m8120n. So I am going with the 8600 then. Thanks for the help.

[rdolan5]

I installed a 650 watt power supply from Best Buy and also a 8800GT OC video card. I also added 2 more GB of RAM. It really screams now with games and video. I couldn't be happier!

[[_chef_]]

9600 is better because of less power suck and more adv. features.