[alchemist]

Will a powered by ATI radeon 7500 work in a HTPC with all the software that works with the ATI cards? You guys convinced me to make the switch back to the evil Intel chips....my whole house is AMD T-bird based. Should I also use DDR ram as opposed to Sdram? I want to run dscaler and powerstrip 3 on a CRT projector. I just want to know if its worth it to spend the extra bucks on an ATI built card?

Thanks

 

[Namlemez]

There are utilities to flash a non-ATI ATI card to allow it to take ATI drivers.

 

[warlordbb]

Why move from AMD? Do you have a link to the thread that convinced you, cause I'm not convinced.

 

[alchemist]

Well the guys here seem to constantly talk about the stability of the Intel platform......my AMD platforms have always been stable, but I've never used dvd decoding, video capture and dscaler all at once. I know I should go the DDR route, the other factor is i know just how hot the AMD CPU's are......i need to find some benchmarking between the two before I'm totally going over to the dark side

 

[seezar]

This is the link I used to make my sapphire OEM 7500 into what the drivers think is a retail card (go to the bottom of the page):

http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/...ie/index8.html


Of course, use at your own risk, YMMV.

 

[seezar]

Also a nice side effect of flashing to the retail bios is that the oem bios was clocked at 270/183. With the retail bios it now at 290/230. I still have to run some stress tests to make sure the card handles it, but I can always underclock it a bit if I need to.

 

[e vey]

That's right seezer, rub it in real good. You get lucky because you got a Saphire card and I got unlucky because I got Power Color.


It's not as though the websites tell you what is what. "OEM - Powered by ATI" is about all you get.


Oh, and "TV-OUT" can mean composite just as easily as S-Video.

 

[seezar]

e vey,

Sorry to hear about your luck with the oem 7500. Yesterday I had every intention of buying the retail 7500 from a local shop because of what I heard about the oem cards. Unfortunately, the shop was out of retail cards and they sold me the oem for $60. The guy even said they are no longer selling the oem cards because of issues they have had with them. He said I could return it for any reason. Anyway, that local shop is also an internet retailer so if you are so inclined you can hit them up and see if they have any more they would be willing to sell if you are interested. The card I have is the Sapphire 7500 with 64mb DDR and s-video out, rgb out and DVI out.


The address is www.jncs.com


They dont have the oem's listed on their site anymore but they might still have some.

 

[e vey]

Nah.

It's okay. I may end up retiring this card anyway to a non-HDTV box. It works just as advertised, so I have no real beef. It's just the way some people talk, every 7500 can be flashed and if you can't do it, there is something wrong with you, not the card.


Can't you just see your retailer getting returns because they can't be flashed up to retail?