Video Card

[JonnyCam]

Does anyone have any experience with the HD3450 PCi-e video card and how it does decoding H264?

I have come to the end of my patience with the AGP version of the HD2600XT, and think it could be partly due to my crappy motherboard (and the use of AGP)
Brand new install of XP last night, same errors - Vid BIOS failures, non-enumerated calls GUID calls. (from event viewer)


The model I was looking at was this one:

http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecifica...mID=362879

Does it matter it's only 64bit memory pathway?

Cheers

[sub]

I dont have any experience with that card, but I can tell you I went through similar things at the end of last year. AGP just isnt practical any more, particularly for new stuff H.264 etc. Video card manufacturers just dont put the effort in for supporting the AGP products, so the drivers are just flakey. I switched to PCI-e, and the world got a whole lot simplier.

[JonnyCam]

Thanks for that,

all of the pci-e cards are a lot cheaper as well, and I want to get away from the current VIA chipset on my m/b - it does strange things.

It seems I will have to get an IDE to SATA converter, as mosat of the boards only seem to have 1 x PATA connector now.

I got the new drivers from the sapphire website (realeased 26 March) and they didn't even detect my card, even though they were the AGP hotfix drivers.

My H264 playback uses between 10-15% of my CeleronD 3 ghz, but then it glitches, and the video display turns off, but PC keeps running (and recording etc)

Ahh, the fun of installing a new m/b!

[Torque]

Here's a thread on AVS Forum I participated in while deciding what to get:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=985451

It should answer any of your questions.

[Deusxmachina]

Does it matter it's only 64bit memory pathway?

I'd say likely so. I think it's said you need 12gb/sec bandwidth for 1080 HD, and I don't think that has that much. Haven't had any problems with my newer 8500GT other than the fan dying in a week, and the 8500s are pretty cheap now as well. I think the 2400pro/3450 is simply too much of a gamble and a pain in the ass to spend $114 to find out if it works ok or not.

Assuming you only have two IDE/PATA hard drives, you'd then only need to buy a new SATA DVD drive if you didn't want to get an PATA-to-SATA converter. Most converters I've seen are half the cost of a brand-new DVD drive anyway.

[hansol123]

I have a dongle on order from Komplett (1 PCS 344881 HIS DVI to HDMI adapter for 3K series). When I placed the order for a HIS 3450 card I believed that the DVI to HDMI converter was included in the package but after receiving the card I found to my cost that it was an extra. It would appear that some retail packs include the dongle and other do not. You may as well purchase OEM pack and a separate converter.