[mythtv-users] Radeon 9600 Problems...

[Dan Ritter]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2007 at 07:15:48PM -0700, Robert Current wrote:
> After managing to keep my system working ok for a couple months now, I
> finally agreed to help a buddy convert his old computer into a MythTV
> system.  He has a 1300 Celeron with 512M RAM, and it worked fine for
> recording.   But the onboard video didn't seem up to the job, because
> playback was occasionally choppy.  It actually did ok, if not
> recording at the same time, usually, but it was really borderline.

CPU isn't up to snuff, and...

> So, we ordered a Asus A9600PRO/TD ATi Radeon 9600PRO 256MB AGP VCD
> w/TV-Out (actually from Computer Geeks
> http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ASUS-A9600PRO-256MB&cat=VCD if
> anyone wants to know the exact card).  He wanted S-video out, I
> figured it had half the RAM his whole system had, why not...

You wanted a card that has support for XVMC, to offload some
decoding from the CPU, but you didn't buy one.

> Well...  I spent hours screwing around and finally got the TV-Out to
> work, but playback is horrible.  Now, looking at the requirement
> specs, this should be an OK system?  I found one place that said the
> minimum of HDTV playback was a Radeon 9600!

If you had adequate CPU, yes.

The Radeon 9600 is a perfectly adequate card for other things -- in
fact, that's pretty much the standard video card that I specify for
Linux desktop boxes at work -- but not for a low-CPU system which needs
XVMC. 

Trade it back for this:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=V5500-256A&cat=VCD

And you'll be much happier.

-dsr-


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