How crucial is vid card to TV-Out performance?

[absinthe]

I'm trying to upgrade my current box to pass on as a "family PC" before building my own entirely new PC. I don't want to spend much on the family PC because basically anything I do at all will be a tremendous upgrade compared to the 950 mhZ Compaq dinosaur they're currently using, but I'm stuck on the vid card issue.

I do think I want to stick to a 939 mobo as I'll be building an X2-based system for myself and would one day like to pass on the X2 chip to the "family PC" next time I upgrade.

Basically, I'm looking at the Anandtech buying guide recommendation for an Athlon 64 3000+ with an MSI RS480M2-IL mobo for the family PC. This is attractive because of the onboard video, but the drawback is that the board doesn't do overclocking.

I'm wondering how crucial a video card really is at all to someone who doesn't do a lot of gaming. I mean, I enjoy games, but mostly real-time strategy (RTS) stuff like Warcraft and Starcraft, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc. I do, however, anticipate using the PC in the future as an HTPC. So I guess I'm wondering ... as long as the needed outputs are present on the card (DVI/HDMI), how much does the "quality" of the card affect the quality of TV-Out? Will the (reasonably) cheapest card with the needed connectors do just as good a job at TV-Out as the latest and greatest video card?

In other words, would it be worth it to get a more overclockable board and add on a $50 video card?

-abs

 

[mOeeOm]

I only recommend you get a separate card and not use onboard video because onboard video eats up your ram, otherwise onboard video is good enuff I was playing wc3 on medium to high on an nvidia Geforce2 3dmb onboard video on my Compaq.

 

[Matthias99]

If you are using DVI/HDMI output, the video card will make absolutely no difference. It's a completely digital signal -- either it gets through or it doesn't (although you might want to look for some of the articles about NVIDIA's lousy DVI implementation on the GF5/GF6 boards; this can cause problems on displays like the Dell 2405FPW).

For analog output (VGA/Component, or RCA/SVideo out), the videocard can make a difference. However, most newer cards are pretty much equivalent here. Matrox is supposed to be the best (but they also have horrible 3D performance and cost a small fortune) for analog out, but ATI's last few generations are pretty close unless you are pushing VERY high res/refresh combos (and even then you may not see much difference). Some cheaper NVIDIA cards (especially some of the low-end FX5200s) have been reputed to have serious image quality issues on their VGA output.

An RS480-based board should do just fine. And why are you concerned about overclocking if you're not going to be playing games and you're using the system as an HTPC? It's not like it takes a ton of horsepower to watch DVDs, or even to record video...

 

[absinthe]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
And why are you concerned about overclocking if you're not going to be playing games and you're using the system as an HTPC? It's not like it takes a ton of horsepower to watch DVDs, or even to record video...

Video and audio encoding ... lots of it. Of course, not necessarily on the "family" PC, but it still might be nice to have it as a backup.

-abs

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: absinthe

Originally posted by: Matthias99
And why are you concerned about overclocking if you're not going to be playing games and you're using the system as an HTPC? It's not like it takes a ton of horsepower to watch DVDs, or even to record video...

Video and audio encoding ... lots of it. Of course, not necessarily on the "family" PC, but it still might be nice to have it as a backup.

-abs

Ah. But, considering that you're upgrading from a 950Mhz (Pentium 3?), the 3000+ is still a *big* step up even at stock. And if you have an A64 X2-based 'workstation' to do the bulk of the work, this is not something I would be real concerned about.

But if you'd like to toy around with overclocking the system, there are many cheap AGP and PCIe graphics cards you can get in the $30-50 range, and a number of excellent motherboards out there.

 

[absinthe]

I suppose I'm also asking this question in regard to my primary PC. I will almost definitely be using that one for S-video out to a standard TV. I was planning on an X800XL vid card in that (the X2-based) system (also as recommended by Anandtech). Do you think that will do me for that purpose (analog TV-out) and for moderate gaming?

-abs

edit: My primary PC, BTW, will be an upgrade from an Athlon XP 1600+ (stock speed 1.4 gHz). It takes me about 6 hours to do a 2-pass XviD encode of a 2-hour movie. I'm hoping to cut that in half with an X2 3800+.