Hi all,
I've just upgraded my GBPVR previously running on a SFF P3/1000 with 384MB of RAM and 40GB hd, to a towered Amd XP/2000+ with 1GB of RAM and 2x raid0-300GB array.
The gfx-card in the old SFF-box was a PCI Geforce4/MX 4000 with 64M I think.
For the new(ish) box I'm considering either a Geforce2 MX/400 with 32M of RAM or a Geforce4 Ti4200 with 64M, both of which are AGP-type. The GF2 is fanless, not sure of the GF4. Both have a S-Video outlet I can connect the TV too.
I see from benchmarks on eg THG that the GF4 is 2-4x faster in rendering stuff, but not sure if it makes any any difference when displaying on a TV at 800x600@32b.
What would your choice be?
TIA.
I don't like to hear my box running, I want it nearly in-audible as it is an HTPC and it sits in my entertainment center.
If it were me... I'd try the fan less and see how it works, if it isn't up to par, you can always swap it for the higher powered card with very little setup changes.
rowle1jt Wrote:I don't like to hear my box running, I want it nearly in-audible as it is an HTPC and it sits in my entertainment center.
If it were me... I'd try the fan less and see how it works, if it isn't up to par, you can always swap it for the higher powered card with very little setup changes.
Was thinking along the same line as you.
Will check the GF4, as I'm not sure if it has a fan or not.
With the current GF2, I can see some tears every now and then, when viewing recordings, but only on scenes with a lot of action. I did not see any tears in the picture with the PCI-GF4 on the old SFF-box.
There just might be some performance issues with the GF2-card, as compared to the GF4
. I'll report back soonish.
Thx for the feedback!
adrian_vg@yahoo.com Wrote:Was thinking along the same line as you.
Will check the GF4, as I'm not sure if it has a fan or not.
With the current GF2, I can see some tears every now and then, when viewing recordings, but only on scenes with a lot of action. I did not see any tears in the picture with the PCI-GF4 on the old SFF-box.
There just might be some performance issues with the GF2-card, as compared to the GF4. I'll report back soonish.
Thx for the feedback!
Checked the bios settings on a hunch and saw that the AGP speed was set to 2x for whatever reason. Changed it to 4x, and the tears seem to have disappeared.
Also used the fix from
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=14006 (I have the Haupaugge PVR150) and the picture looks better as well. Dunno' if I'm imaging things though...
adrian_vg@yahoo.com Wrote:Checked the bios settings on a hunch and saw that the AGP speed was set to 2x for whatever reason. Changed it to 4x, and the tears seem to have disappeared.
Also used the fix from http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=14006 (I have the Haupaugge PVR150) and the picture looks better as well. Dunno' if I'm imaging things though...
Couldn't sleep last night so I mounted a DVD-ISO with Daemon Tools on the GBPVR-machibe, and watched it over the network. The tears are still there, but only when the content is full of action and a lot is happening on the screen.
Maybe streaming the DVD-data over my 100Mbps network is just plain to much. I don't see the tears when playing recorded shows (usually recorded at medium quality and kept locally on the GBPVR-box).
DVD I assume is transferring more data than a regular recorded show, therefore the occasional tear. I can live with that though.
Yeah, I would imagine that DVD is transferring much more!
I had a GF4 that had the fan go bad. Took a heat sink off of a TNT2, put quality thermal paste on it and used it for a year or so in a box that was on 24/7. I didn't have any heat issues, and there wasn't a TON of air going through the system like I have now. So depending on the card, you might be able to convert it to passive cooling if need be.
I've used a GF2 mx400 with overlay without any tearing issues.
VMR gave me problems.
It was my starter PC for GBPVR.
I can't remember which decoder I eventually used, but I do know I tried a few & made some registry settings to get it to work right.
rowle1jt Wrote:Yeah, I would imagine that DVD is transferring much more!
And then some!
rowle1jt Wrote:I had a GF4 that had the fan go bad. Took a heat sink off of a TNT2, put quality thermal paste on it and used it for a year or so in a box that was on 24/7. I didn't have any heat issues, and there wasn't a TON of air going through the system like I have now. So depending on the card, you might be able to convert it to passive cooling if need be.
Good idea! The former PCI-GF4 Ti 4200 is more or less similar to the AGP-card of the same model I was choosing between earlier, and the PCI-card didn't have a fan, only the heatsink.
I've reason to believe the AGP-GF4 has a fan, but will have to take it out from the machine it's installed in currently to make sure. Anyway, it's a good idea to mod the gfx-card should the need arise.
Thx for the hint!
tipstir Wrote:Ti-200 makes for a good overclocker 500Mhz/500Mhz, I don't use that with GBPVR though games more though...
Is there any advantage in overclocking a gfx-card for GBPVR at all?
adrian_vg@yahoo.com Wrote:Is there any advantage in overclocking a gfx-card for GBPVR at all?
All over clocking will produce more heat as it chip is going outside of clock speed for what it is supposed to work at in normal.
Heat could also be reason you see tearing as in more motion you will also have the card to work more. In PC game where you use 3D rendering and have tearing you will very often have a problem related to how much memory your video card have for framebuffer and how fast it can render it to screen.
I had once GeForce 2 MX100/200 and watched streamed material in DVD quality and have never seen any tearing at that time on my computer screen. Network is on 10 Mb/s so your network at 100 Mb/s should work just fine with DVD material. Just for your information, even a dedicated DVD player might have problem with some scenes if it is too much going on at once, so it is not necessary that your video card/network are the bottle neck for this to happen. In most cases you will have stuttering if your network can't keep up to feed your player with enough video/audio or it will drop frames.
Problem related to motion could also be with how the source material was made in the first place and what kind of resolution and interlacing that was used for it.
What is Interlacing?