MCE 2005 minimum video card requirements

[happyhelper]

I don't know much about video cards or their prices these days and I am hoping some here may be able to tell me the cheapest card I could buy for a PC running MCE2005. I want all the features of the MCE program to work, and not sure what is wrong with a GeForce2 MX200 that makes it incapable of playing movies in MCE, but for some reason it can't. So apparently I need a better card than that, but I just want to get the cheapest that will do the job. I'm not into gaming or anything graphic intensive, so I see spending money on video cards as kind of wasteful (for me). Thanks for your time.

 

[loup garou]

You need a vidcard with at least 64MB RAM, I'm assuming your mx200 is the 32MB model, otherwise, it's a driver issue. I personally use a cheap fanless 9600SE I picked up at newegg. I think it was $50.

 

[Wik]

The card has to be a dx9 card. Nvidia 5200 is about the cheapest you will find.

 

[dev0lution]

Originally posted by: Wik
The card has to be a dx9 card. Nvidia 5200 is about the cheapest you will find.

Ditto. You can get a list of models Microsoft has blessed here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/partners/dfw/partnerlisting.mspx

 

[chrisralston]

MSI has a card with the ATI Theatre 550 Pro chip. Would this be "blessed" for MCE 2005?

Some of the TV Tuners on the list are actual models and some are chips (NVTV, ATI Theatre 550 Pro).

Also, anyone know the difference btwn NVTV and NVTV 200?

 

[chrisralston]

Looks like this answers one of my own questions, LINK.

 

[Raduque]

Any video card capable of DirectX-9 at the hardware level (FX5200 is the cheapest you're going to find new) will work. You could use a DX8-level card (like a Ti4600 or ATi 8500), but I don't reccomend it. The MCE GUI is finicky, and weird things happen (I run a Ti4600).

Any TV-Tuner/Capture card that does hardware MPEG-2 encoding will work with MCE. The Hauppage WinTV-PVR/PVRMCE cards seem to be the most popular.

 

[bupkus]

So neither my nVidia Ti4200 nor my Matrox G550 will work? Why?
I ran my PVR 150 with my G550 on XP Pro but for some reason when I installed MCE I didn't have internet connectivity.

 

[BigLan]

MCE is a directX 9-driven front end. Everything on-screen is directX generated with fancy pixel effects etc (I don't know the full details). Also, the video uses DXVA, not overlay, which is a DX9 feature. Your 4200 might work, just like it can play DX9 games, but you might have problems elsewhere.

Having said that, it ran OK on my 9200SE for a couple of weeks until I upgraded.

 

[igr11]

A very cheap card (~$60) that will give excellent quality is GeForce 6200 TurboCache (paired with nVidia's PureVideo software decoder). Unfortunately, you have to be on PCIe.

 

[crizzar]

bah.. old news

edit: I'm dumb

 

[mcveigh]

iused to run mine on a radeon 8500 w/o problems.
I now run a 9600 though.

 

[jldash]

the guys are all correct dx9 64MB is the threshold for MCE. I used a 9200 64MB card (AGP) for quite some time with no problems. However, when I upgraded the video card everything was *much* snappier.
J

 

[ShadowBlade]

nVidia FX5200>*
I can play HL2 at medium settings on mine