[mythtv-users] Decent, Inexpensive Video Card? (Yes, I did search)

[Galen]

I have been eyeing the 5200FX as an inexpensive option actually. Does 
the s-video output vary from brand to brand? I really like the idea of 
having the video output to s-video if there's no other display. Does 
the fan vary in volume/presence from brand to brand? I would imagine 
that at least the fan varies from brand to brand, if not the s-video 
and possibly other attributes - can anybody specify brands if relevant?

Has anybody tested the 1920 x 1080 DVI out? I thought I heard there 
were issues with this. I'm basically looking to output full-resolution 
HDTV to a device like a LCD monitor. Am I completely off-base, or have 
their been issues with this?

Out of curiosity, does the VRAM have any impact on performance, 
particularly with XvMC? Is XvMC a universal thing, or are higher-end 
cards required to handle XvMC and 1080i? I'm not exactly in the mood to 
decrypt white papers regarding XvMC or dig through source code and try 
to understand how precisely it works and how that would apply to answer 
this practical question... if there's a nice bit of practical 
documentation on XvMC somewhere on the net that I'm not finding with 
Google, I'd love it if someone would point me in that direction.

Thanks!

-Galen

On Apr 21, 2005, at 8:58 PM, Bryan Halter wrote:

>  I have an Nvidia 5200FX, comes in both PCI and AGP has DVI VGA and 
> S-Video, supports XvMC and if no monitor is detected on DVI or VGA 
> dumps all output to S-Video so there are no extra drivers needed.  
> Only down side is there's a fan on it so its a bit noisier than the 
> GF4***, though I'm not sure if those support DVI.
>
>  --Bryan
>
>  Galen wrote:I'm looking for some suggestions for an inexpensive AGP 
> video card here. I'm building a stand-alone HDTV system, there are no 
> other planned uses (no games, etc), with an Athlon 64 3200, possibly 
> an A64 3500 depending on cost when I purchase. Motherboard supports 
> AGP 8x. In theory, the graphics card doesn't need to be something too 
> massive, just a solid conduit to the screen, perhaps with XvMC to 
> boost performance a little. In particular, I would like to be able to 
> run full 1920 x 1080 via DVI, be able to use a DVI to VGA adapter if 
> desired (pretty standard), and boot directly to S-Video (for when I am 
> hooked to an analog TV). Is such a thing possible? Can you offer any 
> suggestions?
>>
>>  Yes, I did search, but I'm having a little difficulty putting 
>> everything together; 1920x1080 DVI issues, S-Video booting, etc. Your 
>> help would be appreciated.
>>
>>  As for my background, I'm a spoiled Mac user working on plans for an 
>> HDTV MythTV box. :P I'm really comfortable with the unix-stuff on the 
>> software-only side, but the hardware and driver stuff, especially 
>> under Linux requires some adjustment on my part! I'm used to hardware 
>> working or not with pretty straightforward drivers (and in most 
>> cases, none at all - it just works), and the thought of recompiling 
>> my kernel for hardware support is still slightly amusing to me. I'm 
>> sure it will become serious enough soon enough, however! I have done 
>> some work on my darwin kernel under OS X, manually patching it to 
>> change the power management for my laptop, but that was super 
>> non-standard stuff. I've also made some custom builds of VLC for 
>> OpenGL accelerated YUV conversion, custom builds of DVD rippers for 
>> enhanced quality encoding, etc. So I'm not a dummy, but I'm just not 
>> an x86/Linux hardware expert, if that makes any sense to you people 
>> out there.
>>
>>  -Galen
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> mythtv-users mailing list
>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users