Minimum hardward for 1080i broadcast HD - GeForce 6200, P4, 2Gb?

[jcjefferies]

I have been looking at some of these low end motherboards using shared ram for a NPVR computer. I have a 2005 vintage 3GHZ P4 Dell with no AGP slot so was using it with a PCI video card as a SD NPVR client to a 1080p display. I have removed the PCI card and am now using the built in Intel Extreme2 82865G video card with access to up to 100MB shared RAM. The highest resolution it will run at is 1360 x 768 which I suppose is reasonable for on board video of that age. Even after close examination I cannot fault the SD picture from NPVR on a 1080p display.

It is not unreasonable to expect that in the six years since that computer was built that technology has advance to the point where the on board video card on even a basic motherboard can display a 1080p HD video signal. These built in video cards can use up to 300-500MB of RAM for video which is far more than NPVR needs for a 1080p display. Does anyone have firsthand experience using NPVR with one of these low end motherboards with onboard video cards at 1080p as I am thinking about building a dedicated NPVR computer into a 2U PC box so no room for full height video cards.

As far as I can see VDAPU is for X Windows so not relevant to NPVR. It is described as equivalent to the Microsoft DXVA for Windows so perhaps you should be looking for a DXVA compliant video card.

[spdrac1]

I have been looking at some of these low end motherboards using shared ram for a NPVR computer. I have a 2005 vintage 3GHZ P4 Dell with no AGP slot so was using it with a PCI video card as a SD NPVR client to a 1080p display. I have removed the PCI card and am now using the built in Intel Extreme2 82865G video card with access to up to 100MB shared RAM. The highest resolution it will run at is 1360 x 768 which I suppose is reasonable for on board video of that age. Even after close examination I cannot fault the SD picture from NPVR on a 1080p display.

It is not unreasonable to expect that in the six years since that computer was built that technology has advance to the point where the on board video card on even a basic motherboard can display a 1080p HD video signal. These built in video cards can use up to 300-500MB of RAM for video which is far more than NPVR needs for a 1080p display. Does anyone have firsthand experience using NPVR with one of these low end motherboards with onboard video cards at 1080p as I am thinking about building a dedicated NPVR computer into a 2U PC box so no room for full height video cards.

As far as I can see VDAPU is for X Windows so not relevant to NPVR. It is described as equivalent to the Microsoft DXVA for Windows so perhaps you should be looking for a DXVA compliant video card.

I don't have any first hand experience, but my searching (and the other answers here) lead me to believe that an onboard solution "should" be sufficient for 1080p video if it utilizes sideport (dedicated) memory in addition to shared system memory. Personally, I'm on the fence as whether to go with the full onboard solution or a cheaper board with a low-profile discrete card. The price for both solutions is about equal. The performance of the discrete card is sure to be better, but may be overkill while surely consuming additional power.

Decisions decisions.