[mythtv-users] TV-out video card hardware requirements (AGP vs. PCI)

Fred Clausen fred at derf.nl
Fri Jun 8 13:08:33 UTC 2007


Hello,

Brad Patterson wrote:
> I need to get a new video card for my myth box, as the current one that 
> I have doesn't include a TV output.  The problem is that the 2 computers 
> I am thinking about "converting" into a full time myth box are older 
> machines and neither of them have PCI-express slots.  One of the PCs has 
> an AGP slot and the other only has PCI slots.  My question is this:
> 
> If I opt for the PCI (non-express version) video card, will this be 
> enough performance to support video & TV playback?  The card I am 
> looking at right now is on sale at Best Buy, it is a BFG  brand card 
> with Nvidia 6200 OC with 256MB of ram.  I know that it will have plenty 
> of ram on the video card, but I wasn't sure if the PCI slot type of card 
> would cause a problem for video playback to the TV. 

I would say that for (SD at least) the regular PCI will be more than 
adequate. Will this machine be SD or HD? If you are only watching SD 
then both cards are OK and you will be able to use a modest CPU. Be sure 
to read the hardware guide at:

http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1

Of course, any hardware decoding abilities such as XvMC will help 
further reduce main CPU load.

Cheers,

Fred.

> 
> Can anyone clue me in here?  Thanks!!
> 
> 
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