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Recommendation for MCE graphics card upgrade

590 Views 6 Replies 4 Participants Last post by kny3twalker, Feb 18, 2005

JohnDiamant

Discussion Starter · Feb 16, 2005

I have an MCE (Media Center Edition 2005) PC (HP873n) which I just upgraded with an ATI HDTV Wonder card. Now I believe I need to upgrade the graphics card (I currently have a GeForce4 MX420). I think I need a DirectX hardware-accelerated card. I occasionally get jumpy HD playback, and I have one channel I can't reliably play back at all (the WB, but FOX and PBS work -- is there a difference in HD format they broadcast?).

Anyway, I'm looking for a recommendation on a relatively inexpensive card able to play all HD formats (720p, 1080i, is there a 1080p and can HDTV Wonder capture it?). I don't yet have an HDTV, and would like a card that doesn't artificially limit me too much in terms of output formats. Finally, I'm concerned that if the graphics card isn't capable of outputting a DRM stream, that I thought I read here that some TVs will down-convert the video to a lower resolution in that case. I don't want any nasty surprises.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

John

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kny3twalker

· #2 · Feb 16, 2005

the 6600 would be a good video card line to choose from

whatever you do stay away from SE and LE cards

and how do you view the recorded HDTV content without a HDTV? over svideo from your video card to a SDTV?

well you are downconverting the HDTV content to 480i then

if on a PC monitor then you are using the PC monitor basically as a HD monitor since VGA can display HD resolutions

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JohnDiamant

Discussion Starter · #3 · Feb 17, 2005

Quote:

Originally posted by kny3twalker
the 6600 would be a good video card line to choose from

whatever you do stay away from SE and LE cards

and how do you view the recorded HDTV content without a HDTV? over svideo from your video card to a SDTV?

well you are downconverting the HDTV content to 480i then

if on a PC monitor then you are using the PC monitor basically as a HD monitor since VGA can display HD resolutions

Thanks. I assume you mean the GeForce 6600. So I see they come in a PCI Express and an AGP version. The specs say AGP 8X, but I'm not really sure how fast my system's AGP slot is -- it's an HP 873n, and the specs on the website just say AGP, without giving an nX number. Is that going to cause me a problem? Any idea how to find out how fast my AGP slot really is?

As to how I display HDTV, I'm doing both of the above. I normally watch on an analog TV, and occasionally on a PC monitor. I realize the analog TV is downconverting. This is temporary, as I want to make sure I have good HD content before investing in an expensive large-screen HDTV (which is dropping in price and increasing in size significantly each year).

That said, during my "testing phase," there are some immediate benefits to HD and digital broadcast:

* crystal clear reception (no analog snow)

* access to subchannels that aren't broadcast analog at all

* Since I only have a few digital stations, I'm concerned that

my analog content will look even worse on an HDTV than it

does now -- I can see this when I view analog content on my

PC monitor.

Thanks,

John

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Steve Schauer

· #4 · Feb 17, 2005

You need a card that does DirectX 9.0. For low cost AGP, either the nVidia 6200 or the ATI 9600 are well under $100. Fanless for quiet also.

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kny3twalker

· #5 · Feb 17, 2005

He said he wants to ready for HDTV support

I still say the 6600 the capabilities of those cards are quite limited

and this can be seen quite easily from looking at the GPU and Ram speeds and furthermore the limits of what nvidia places on the 6200 in the pure video specs

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stk

· #6 · Feb 17, 2005

Yeah, the 6200 doesn't support nVidia's PureVision hardware accelerated decoding for 1080i. Only 720p. I'm looking to upgrade also and am probably going to go for a 6600.

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kny3twalker

· #7 · Feb 18, 2005

I think it more important that it does not support 1080p

cause that is the other resolution used for WMV HDs not 1080i

720p and 1080p

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