Video Card Recommendation

[chuggnut]

Hi,

I've just migrated from MythTV to GB-PVR but I'm having problems with my video not running smoothly. I presume this is a video card issue as I'm running with an old gf4 mx and my TV resolution is 1366 x 768.

What would be the minimum video card required to run sd tv smoothly at this res?

Cheers

Jeremy

[stefan]

Welcome to the forums
You should search the forums for posts made by csy. He has done some extensive analyses of the matter.

[stefan]

Otherwise you could do some simple tests: siwtch to overlay (easiest on your GX card), and try some different mpeg decoders. If you have ffdshow installed, it can be quite a resource hog.

[nitrogen_widget]

From what i've seen, using a gforce2 & a radeon 7000 going from 640x480 to 800x600 to 1024x768 did not make much of a difference at all with cpu usage.

The only thing that made a difference was going to a DX9 card.

When it comes to using FFDSHOW I've noticed it's almost all CPU again with the differences in DX9 & non-DX9 cards.

Going from a gforce2 mx 400 to a gforce 5200 did lower my CPU cycles while scaling up to 1024x768 on my test machine.
I think I went from 99% & stuttering to %90.
It has a celeron 2.4 ghz in it.

On my main desktop PC I have a 2 ghz Athlon 64 & have a went from a radeon 9600 pro to a gforce 7600 GT I really didn't notice much of a CPU drop & didn't see any difference in quality when scaling up.

This leads me to believe when it comes to postprocessing you can go with a newer DX9 video card on the cheaper side & put more money towards a CPU.


My tests were done using media player classic & GBPVR & are by no means scientific so anyone please correct me if you think i'm steering someone in the wrong direction.

[chuggnut]

I'm also using a 2.4 celeron that I had gathering dust. So it probably confirms my thoughts that the gf4 mx is just not cutting the mustard.

Any idea whether a 128mb ati radeon 9550 would be any good or have I got to bite the bullet and spend some serious cash?

Cheers

Jeremy

[nitrogen_widget]

Either a 9550 or a 9600 since their both close in price.
Get one with a 128 mb memory bandwidth if you go with 9550.

I have 2 9550's & a 9600 pro.
one 9550 is 64bit memory interface & 128mb of ram.

the other 9550 is 128bit memory & 256mb ram.
The same as the 9600 pro.
Going from a 9550 to a 9600 gave me a little more headroom using my quality settings for upscaling, but not enough that I could take the post processing up another notch.

the 64 bit 9550 couldn't keep up with the 128bit cards when I enabled post processing (cpu tanked & I got some stuttering)

With post processing disabled I couldn't tell the difference between the 3 cards image wise.

a 9600 has a higher clock speed & only costs about $57 on newegg.
some have a $10 rebate.

I hope I didn't confuse you.

[chuggnut]

Not at all.

I was looking at the 9550 64bit 128mb so it was useful info.

I think I can get a 256mb 9600pro for about £25 + delivery ($50+) with the google checkout offer on at the moment so I might go for that.

What annoys me is I sold an old 9800pro for £35 only about 3 weeks ago as it was gathering dust. Why does that always happen!

Cheers again.

Jeremy

[btodd]

From what i've seen, using a gforce2 & a radeon 7000 going from 640x480 to 800x600 to 1024x768 did not make much of a difference at all with cpu usage.

The only thing that made a difference was going to a DX9 card.

When it comes to using FFDSHOW I've noticed it's almost all CPU again with the differences in DX9 & non-DX9 cards.

Going from a gforce2 mx 400 to a gforce 5200 did lower my CPU cycles while scaling up to 1024x768 on my test machine.
I think I went from 99% & stuttering to %90.
It has a celeron 2.4 ghz in it.

On my main desktop PC I have a 2 ghz Athlon 64 & have a went from a radeon 9600 pro to a gforce 7600 GT I really didn't notice much of a CPU drop & didn't see any difference in quality when scaling up.

This leads me to believe when it comes to postprocessing you can go with a newer DX9 video card on the cheaper side & put more money towards a CPU.


My tests were done using media player classic & GBPVR & are by no means scientific so anyone please correct me if you think i'm steering someone in the wrong direction.

hi - just upgraded from integrated graphics to a Radeon 7000. updated to latest drivers from ATI, rebooted and *poof* "this system does not support VMR9" switched to overlay nd playback worked ok but recording was a mess and 15 sec off on audio sync!

pulled the card and VMR worked again. still wking through the kinks, but I bought the video card to get an S Video out for my ancient TV, and now I'm back to VGA?

any advice appreciated!
Todd

[nitrogen_widget]

hi - just upgraded from integrated graphics to a Radeon 7000. updated to latest drivers from ATI, rebooted and *poof* "this system does not support VMR9" switched to overlay nd playback worked ok but recording was a mess and 15 sec off on audio sync!

pulled the card and VMR worked again. still wking through the kinks, but I bought the video card to get an S Video out for my ancient TV, and now I'm back to VGA?

any advice appreciated!
Todd

The radeon 7000 is a little on the old side.
I don't think VMR was available back then.
VMR is playback only.

If there is a problem with the recording then it could be tuner issue.
If it's a live TV issue then it could be your mpeg decoder.

don't use system default in the config when picking decoders.

[btodd]

The radeon 7000 is a little on the old side.
I don't think VMR was available back then.
VMR is playback only.

If there is a problem with the recording then it could be tuner issue.
If it's a live TV issue then it could be your mpeg decoder.

don't use system default in the config when picking decoders.

shoot - was hoping to do this for less rather than more. comcast dvr is starting to look pretty good!

things actually were working pretty well with onboard graphics and sys defaults. the only issue to fix was a line out to my TV. recording quality and audio sync degraded to unusable when i started tweaking the decoders. so experimenting with everything back to default, no radeon card and see what happens.

at least we're into summer reruns!
thanks
Todd