What AGP Video Card Do You Use For HDTV?

[waybeyond]

i had a 9800xt but i fried it trying to overclock it
back then they were still good cards with good drivers

did you install your nvidia card on fresh install?

to tell you the truth if there was another video card brand i would probably give it a go

yup, that 9600xt was a trooper for me. solid through and through -- though i never tried overclocking it

i did a complete uninstall via "add remove programs", then booted into safe mode and uninstalled with a program called "driver cleaner pro", rebooted, installed... at least half a dozen times. the card's not running hot, i have a good psu, ran memtest86, ran a program i found that does a stress test on the video card. all checked out okay. it would crash only during specific HD scenes i'd recorded with my tv-tuner card. problem continued until i installed forceware 91.47. i'm hoping it won't crash... fingers crossed. i've read of people completely reformating their hard drive, doing a clean install of their os and still having the problem. for some people upgrading to vista helps, for others it doesn't seem to make a difference. whether it's agp or pci-e doesn't seem to make a difference either...

anyway, after recently searching for what people think of ati's drivers it looks like they both have their issues

we need some new blood in the video card department.

[stustunz]

yeah i have tried the latest nvidia driver and they suck on my system to bsod
although it showed as the dvb-s card causing the issue when i downgraded to below 100.xx
i havent had any crashes very strange
sorry this is going off track a little
the ati pcie 2400 i couldnt load the older drivers or omega as it was a new card and the older driver wouldnt load i tried and gave up

yip need someone to come up with a card for video playback not games i thought that was what the 2400/2600 cards were aimed at but seriously i think they failed to make driver to go with the cards they try and make drivers that fit all cards........

[Pob]

I cannot decide if ATI Nvidia are very clever or just crooks...

The forums are full of people trying to work out how much they need to spend to get smooth video, and now HD video.

But a $10 chip, such as the Sigma EM8620L derivatives, can effortlessly play video, including HD, and is the type of chip used on many upscaling DVD players, media drives, network media players etc. It is all done in hardware, there are no colourspace issues nor any jerkiness or tearing.

So I wonder why such chips are not used on todays graphics cards?

The idea of paying out for these high-level GPU's, CPU's, and memory just to play video is like putting a nuclear power station in your back yard to run one toaster in the morning...
Pob

[flyswatta]

I cannot decide if ATI Nvidia are very clever or just crooks...

The forums are full of people trying to work out how much they need to spend to get smooth video, and now HD video.

But a $10 chip, such as the Sigma EM8620L derivatives, can effortlessly play video, including HD, and is the type of chip used on many upscaling DVD players, media drives, network media players etc. It is all done in hardware, there are no colourspace issues nor any jerkiness or tearing.

So I wonder why such chips are not used on todays graphics cards?

The idea of paying out for these high-level GPU's, CPU's, and memory just to play video is like putting a nuclear power station in your back yard to run one toaster in the morning...
Pob

Great comment! I've been wondering the same thing myself. I mean, it takes a 2 GHz computer with a hardware based decoding video card to be able to playback smooth on a computer, yet a tv with a built-in tuner can do it effortlessly. I've wondered if there were some magic chip that would do the decoding.

[fla]

My brother just gave me a free AGP (he needs PCI Express) Visiontek HD2400 pro so I replaced my old nvidia FX5200. Since my SD TV connects to it via s-video I don't see much difference.

My question is how would this card connect to an HDTV if I had one? There are two DVI-I outputs and a 7 pin "TV/component HDTV" output that works with my 4 pin s-video cable but I guess the 3 extra pins might be for component HDTV with some special adapter? I've seen some DVI to component HD adapters (google) but what would be the optimal choice? The Visiotek package only includes a DVI-VGA adapter.

[zed]

If the TV has DVI input, that will work. For HDMI use either a DVI-HDMI adapter and and HDMI cable or a DVI-HDMI cable. If you want sound over HDMI you'll need the ATI DVI-HDMI adapter but I don't know if that'll work with the AGP cards (then again, I can't seem to get it to work with a PCIe card... ).

You're right...it'll output component via a special dongle in that 7 pin output but DVI/HDMI will give better picture quality.

[bogyver]

If your HDTV has VGA you could hook up using the dvi to vga adapter, I use vga and am very pleased with the way it looks, also you avoid the strange scaling issues that can arise from the way a HDTV interprets the dvi signal coming from your computer.
earlier in the thread there are post from a member that has 1080p tv and when setting the out put to 1920 x 1080 it would be to large for the TV and it had to be scaled back, its not a big problem but it can be very confusing why your 1080p set doesn't look like it does 1080p

[fla]

Don't have an HDTV yet but xmas is coming... Nice to know which inputs to look for. Thanks for the tips guys.

[roy]

My system needed an AGP upgrade to run pvrx2. I just got an XFX GeForce 6200 from Buy.com (I know, I know) for $34 after rebate, and free shipping came in 5 days. Installed today and it seems to work great, although I don't do HDTV yet.

They have it again at that price now here.

[brfish]

I will be getting theVisiontek AGP 2600 HD Pro for xmas and will post my results here. I will be putting it in my HTPC P4 with an Intel Chipset and Southbridge. Hopefully it goes smoothly.