Video card or other hardware recommendations

[serafis]

This has probably been answered before but I can't get Search to work on the forums at the moment.

Firstly, thanks in advance, and also thanks to Sub for a damn fine piece of software - I can't remember when we last used our DVD player or hard drive recorder, which is a testament to how good this all actually is.

Now for the question.

I'm after some recommendations for the best budget (cheap), silent (fanless) video card for my home theatre PC. I don't use it for games, only for GBPVR watching AVIs, MPEGs and DVDs. We watch a lot of movies and record quite a few TV shows that get transcoded to AVI.

I currently have the following, (mostly secondhand, and built on a shoestring budget):
- ASUS K8VSE Deluxe mainboard with AMD-64 XP2800 1.8GHz processor,
- 1GHz DDR400 RAM
- 160GB IDE drive and 350GB SATAII drive, and 16x DVDR/W drive
- Hauppauge PVR150MCE TV tuner (analog antenna TV only)
- Inno3D GEforce FX-5500 video card, driving dual-display to a CRT TV through S-video-to-composite, and a Panasonic PT-AX100E 1080p projector on a 100" widescreen via DVI-to-HDMI (really nice low-price projector incidentally - lives up to all its reviews, highly recommennded!)

I'm using NVidia Purevide decoder for MPEG and DVD (also for DVD audio), FFDShow for AVI, and AC3Filter for audio on MPEG and AVI. All running on XP SP2.

This combination seems to be reasonably stable under PVRX2 (running ABOVENORMAL and in -FSE mode) apart from some slight video jitter on fast-moving scenes, and a bit of tearing about 2/3 down the screen on MPEG and AVI decoding. Also, watching live TV with Interlacing set as Encoder Passthorugh, the audio gradually desyncs and leads the video by more than a second after several minutes of viewing.

If not in -FSE mode, the jitter / tearing is much more noticeable, to the extent of being annoying. All more noticeable on the projector than the TV of course. CPU runs at up to 50% in non-FSE, and between 40% and 100% in FSE mode. On some oddly-mastered intractive DVDs (e.g. Digital Video Essentials) chapter skipping or menu navigation can cause it all to freeze completely at 100% CPU, requiring a hard reboot.

I'm thinking the video card may just not be up to the job but family budget doesn't allow me to experiment too much (i.e to upgrade and then find it was the CPU after all!). So I'm wondering if anyone has had similar experiences, and can recommend a really good but not too expensive, silent (important as this is a very low-noise living-room box) AGP video card that would work better than the FX5600. Also opinions whether NVIDIA is generally better than ATI/Radeon or vice versa, for home theatre.

Or any other performance tips - I've read the forums and tried all the usual (various decoder combinations, QUARTZ.dll, latest drivers, tweaks etc.) and I do know a bit about PCs - it's all as good as I can get it with the current hardware.

[stustunz]

the new ati cards are cheap and will do what you want
not sure they make agp ones though

as to which brand thats like intel and amd each has its pluses whether one is better than the other it really depends on which one you are comparing
i have had both nvidia and ati cards and they both could be better as far as mpeg playback goes they put all the technology into games
the biggest problems with video playback is the interlacing if they ever get rid of that for digital media then the video playback will improve a huge amount

[Deusxmachina]

the new ati cards are cheap and will do what you want
not sure they make agp ones thought

Yeah, if the prices I see are much of an indication, I don't know if AGP ones are worth the bother (and probably haven't been for a year, really). With a quick search, I see ATI 2400 for $120-ish. When you can get the PCIE version for $50-ish, meh. Otherwise, the best you can do is something like a 6600GT or 7600GT, but AGP still tends to come at a premium.

When it comes to upgrading like that, I'm of the opinion to buy a new and faster motherboard, sell the old one for whatever you can get, and go from there. When a usable motherboard is about $50 and a nice one is $75, that can be what would have been the extra cost for an AGP version video card right there.

Pretty sure the tearing is generally video card related. I think the audio out of synch is something else. I get audio lag with live tv, it lags the more the same channel is on. That's with an ATI 2400 and a Core2Duo at 2.8ghz, so I'm thinking it's a muxing problem or something else.

I would think your current video card would be fine for non-HD. Dunno if you tried having only one display hooked up or not to possibly take some pressure off the card. The only other thing I can think of is I've read of the PureVideo decoder using more juice than other decoders. The more I read, the more MPV comes up as working well for people, and that one's free so may want to try it.

[serafis]

Thanks for the replies so far. Just noticed the typo in my initial post, my video card is an Inno3D GeForce FX5500 (not 5600) - I've changed the post.

As for decoders, Purevideo is the only one I've managed to get to play DVDs consistently so far - all the others I've tried play some but not others (sound but no video, lockups etc). I'll try some others again anyway when family time permits.

Thanks.

[stustunz]

went and got me ati hd 2400 xt today $150nz cheapest card ive brought so far
first impressions are good
still a bit jumpy but i havent actually set anything other than the resolution
it actually fits my tv screen (something i could never get perfect from the nividia no matter how hard i tried )and the jumpiness is less than the nvidia 6600

the picture seems a bit more detailed so far
ill add more tomorrow if i see any + or - for the card

[elbryyan]

If you find a solution to the audio getting out of sync when watching live TV then post back and let us know. I'm having that problem as well but have not been able to get it figured out yet. I think it has more to do witht he audio renderer then the audio decoder though.

[Modular]

I've just begun to have this problem with my audio not syncing as well. I had everything working perfectly smoothly until I installed my HVR1600 and found that AC3Filter was the only way to decode the DTS source for the audio on the HD channels. So I used AC3Filter and since then all I've had are problems. So I'm not sure that it's the renderer. I would place the blame on the decoder. I'm researching the X-fi cards and it seems as though the XtremeMusic can decode DTS on the chip. It's just that I'm not sure if that's a supported decoder option in GB-PVR. It might be best to simply try another audio decoder rather than AC3Filter, but I'm not sure what else will support DTS. Back to researching!

[stustunz]

i have found using matching decoders audio/video works best

[serafis]

A bit off-topic for the hardware thread but...

...the only way I've found to stop the audio/video sync problems (video lags audio) on Live TV Preview (and it only happens after a few minutes of watching, or if you change channels frequently), is to set Deinterlacing to "None" in the Config Misc screen. That seems to fix it for me.

I think audio/video sync on other video sources (e.g. DVDs, AVIs, recorded TV) is usually a decoder mismatch of some sort. AC3Filter has a setting on one of its config screens to adjust the sync up or down. As does the Audio settings for the PureVideo decoder.

Good idea to use the same audio & video decoders if possible; trouble is, I can't seem to get AC3 or DTS passthrough to SP/DIF on anything other than Purevideo, so I've tended to use that for DVDs, and AC3Filter or FFDShow for everything else. But it's a bit CPU-hungry.

[serafis]

went and got me ati hd 2400 xt today $150nz cheapest card ive brought so far
first impressions are good
still a bit jumpy but i havent actually set anything other than the resolution
it actually fits my tv screen (something i could never get perfect from the nividia no matter how hard i tried )and the jumpiness is less than the nvidia 6600

the picture seems a bit more detailed so far
ill add more tomorrow if i see any + or - for the card

Thanks, will look forward to the update. I've been messing around with decoders and config settings, found FFDShow post-processing was on so thurned that off too, and got a bit of smoothness and CPU improvement, but lost some DVD navigation functionality and AC3/DTS passthru along the way. Oh well, win some lose some. It's mostly quite watchable - the family probably doesn't notice the quality issues but I of course want it perfect!

As they say, if it aint broke, fidddle with it and break it anyway. Gives ya something to fix.