[mythtv-users] What should be the minimum video card memory I should look?

[Jonathan Rogers]

Yalusa Jongihlati wrote:
> Is 64MB enough for a video card I will be using primarily for its TV out
> functionality? Can a 64MB card support 1280x1024 or 1024x768?

Total RAM on the card is probably less important than the bus (PCI, AGP, 
PCIe), GPU, TV out encoder, and driver support of features like TV out. 
If by TV out, you mean NTSC or PAL on composite or SVideo, you're 
limited to pretty low resolution anyway. Some cards might have analog 
component video out, which can support high resolutions. For a digital 
display like LCD, DVI (or HDMI, which is very similar) should be the 
best. That's what I'm using for my LCD TV.

For performance, the particular GPU and driver used can have a big 
impact. For instance, I was using a Radeon 9000 based AGP card with 
X.org's free driver and MythTV's Xv output. The machine was not able to 
keep up playing HD video using the Athlon64 3700+. I swapped the video 
card for an older Radeon 8500. The software configuration is identical, 
but the machine can now just barely keep up decoding and deinterlacing 
1080i video. I plan to swap the CPU for an Athlon64 X2 3800+ to give it 
more headroom.

 From what I've read, using an NVidia card and the proprietary driver 
would require less from the CPU, since it provides XvMC acceleration, 
but I want to stick with Free drivers and I wasn't able to get the TV to 
get along with the NVidia card in my desktop machine anyway.

Jonathan Rogers