Real Magic Hollywood plus card a necessity?

[Joecheng]

This is my old system configuration:
PIII 800
Asus P3V4X
256 mb SDRAM
Geforce 2 GTS 32 MB
Realmagic Hollywood plus
Pioneer DVD-115 16X
Matsushita 8X burner
Creative SB Live! platinum 5.1

My new system will be:
Athlon XP 2000+
ECS K7VTA3 v3.1
512 MB DDR333 RAM
Creative SB Live! platinum 5.1
Pioneer DVD-115 16X
LiteON 40X burner
I'm still deciding on which graphics card. ATI Radeon 8500LE 128MB or one of the geforce 4 series around 150$ Any Suggestions? either way . . . My graphics card should be more than capable of handling the MPEG decoding the Real Magic card offers . . . . Should I keep it?

 

[jaeger66]

Your video card is not a true hardware MPEG decoder. The GF4 MX is supposed to have hw MPEG, but it is not functional at this point. If you want to do other things on your PC without having DVD stutters, keep the Hollywood.

 

[bluemax]

You can always consider selling both GeforceGTS and Hollywood+, and with that money, buy a Radeon 8500LE.
You'd get a huge 3D game boost and hardware DVD acceleration in one fell swoop.

 

[jaeger66]

The Radeons, like the GFs, do not offer true hw playback.

 

[ripthesystem]

that may be true about the HW playback but you should be able to run tons of other stuff AND a DVD with that setup and the 8500 and see no ill effects. I know- I do it all the time

I think that for older computers (maybe lower than 1ghz?) the Hollywood + could help but I say unless you're going to use it for TV output then sell it and the GF and get the Radeon.

JMHO
ripthesystem

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: jaeger66
The Radeons, like the GFs, do not offer true hw playback.

Yes, this is true, but all the Radeons have hardware acceleration for iDCT, something that only NV17 offers at the moment.

If you want to output the signal to a TV, a separate hardware decoder would probably be best. If not, I'd get a Radeon as was suggested. I use to have a Creative Dxr3, and I compared it side-by-side to another machine using a Radeon with WinDVD. The image quality was clearly superior on the machine using the Radeon. The Radeon/WinDVD/PowerDVD combination also offers far more options for sound output.

The Radeon/WinDVD/PowerDVD is also a more versatile solution. I remember having problems reading certain DVDs with my Dxr3. The passthrough cable used with the H+ and Dxr3 also degrades 2D quality.