My First HTPC. Please feel free to comment.



Quote:
Originally Posted by letoan /forum/post/12840692


This is my first HTPC, the whole purpose of this HTPC is to play movies (most of them are 720p x264)



Here's what I planned:


GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400

2GB DDR 800

Antec Veris Fusion 430 Silver

Vista 32


The mobo have ATI Xpress 1250 onboard with DVI,HDMI,and component output, is this chip good enough?


The TV I'm using is the Panasonic TH-42PH9UK native resolution is 1024x768 or something like that, which only have component input, do I need to get DVI or HDMI board for this TV? If I add in either DVI or HDMI to this TV can I still keep the component board?



Thanks

Click to expand...

System seems pretty good though the AMD CPU is ashame but it's more than enough to play 720p video anyway. Xpress1250 video, it's up to you I guess. If it has component output I can say that component output from ATi cards is pretty good in HD resolutions, though they can only do up to 1080i via component. However that's not an issue for you anyway as the TV isn't that high res to begin with.


I've used the Xpress1250 before on an Abit board and wasn't impressed with the 2D image quality at all--in fact I thought it was quite poor by today's standards. However it may look better from your board or it may just look fine to you anyway, so I would just connect it via component and see what you think.


HDMI will look slightly better than component but it may not be worth the upgrade on your TV depending on how much that "HDMI board" you speak of costs. Anyway as I said, try the component out, see how it looks. If you're satisfied there probably isn't a big need to go HDMI.

If you can, wait for GeForce 8200 mGPU and AMD 780G chipset mbs (February-March). Onboard video (with 5400+ 2.8GHz) will be good enough for every HD content (BD, HD DVD, H.264 files).

thanks all for the replies.


i know the cpu is a little weak. i'll try with that ati 1250 and if thing don't go well then i'll buy another card (maybe the 2600 or something similar.


i found the dvi board for $110 and the hdmi board for $120.

if anyone know somewhere sell them cheaper, please let me know.


thanks again

ok everything is together. i connect via component with my 7600gt, NO BLUE COLOR.

anyone have this problem? i tried to play around with nvidia color setting, nothing happen.

there are times when i swore that green and blue were plugged in correctly. When I actually had them switched.