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Ultra low end card advice for an HTPC

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Project86

Golden Member
I'm planning on using an old rig to play MAME on my big screen. It's an XP 1600+ clocked to around 1.75, 512MB ram, 40GB HD, and currently has a Radeon 7000 32MB card. The Radeon has VGA out and S-Video out, but my Panasonic plasma does not have a vga in (it's a 768p model). So I'm considering upgrading the video to a card that has a DVI out, and then using an adaptor to go HDMI in on my TV.

I'm wondering how bad the S-Video outputs are on these old cards. Keep in mind that at this point I don't have any other uses for this setup other than playing MAME, which is low res anyway. But that brings me to my second point:

Is there any other advantages I would gain by getting a slightly better card, such as a 6200, with DVI out? I can't really think of many other things that this setup would be capable of. I wouldn't be playing video unless they were in HD, and I highly doubt it would be anywhere close to being able to handle that. Even regular DVD playback is probably a strecth on this thing. What else (if anything) am I missing?
 
DVD playback should be fine with your existing system. For HD playback the system would be inadequate so you'd need to find a card that can offload the decoding such as the new ATI or Nvidia cards with Avivo or Purevideo. The modern 8500/8600 Nvidia cards and 2600 Radeon cards are really good for this, but good luck finding one for AGP.


PSSST, if you want a cheap AGP card with DVI, I just listed a Radeon 9250 on Ebay for $20 shipped. I also listed a Geforce FX 5600 Ultra "Flip Chip" for around that price and is a faster 3D card, but it has a noisy cooler.
 
or wait for the new ATI HD series cards to come out, they shouldn't be more than 100 bucks for the lower end ones and they'll give you UVD
 
What benefits would the new ATI cards give me? I'm too lazy to look it up.... but I'm willing to bet that I would still have a very difficult time playing video in 720 or 1080.

I might just get a 6200 for $30 or something. But if anyone else would like to chime in, please do!
 
The HD2400/2600 cards have UVD in it, available on AGP, and it can offload the decoding of H264 from your CPU, so you *should* have no prob playing 1080 even tho your CPU is slow.

6200 don't have Purevideo 2 like the 8 series, so a large amount of decoding still needs to be done on the CPU ( your CPU is unlikely to be able to handle that).



 
The cheapest 2400pro I find is just under $80. Which is a bit more than I'd like to spend on this old rig. But if I was sure it would playback 1080 h.264 movies on it, I might consider it.

So let me ask this question (maybe I need a new thread): Will adding a 2400pro to my XP 1600+, 512mb ram system allow for smooth playback of 1080p x264 files? If so I might seriously consider it.
 
Originally posted by: Project86
The cheapest 2400pro I find is just under $80. Which is a bit more than I'd like to spend on this old rig. But if I was sure it would playback 1080 h.264 movies on it, I might consider it.

So let me ask this question (maybe I need a new thread): Will adding a 2400pro to my XP 1600+, 512mb ram system allow for smooth playback of 1080p x264 files? If so I might seriously consider it.
Click to expand...

Even if you are lazy 😉 you will learn everything you need about video playback performance for newer ATI/NVidia cards by reading this XBit labs article

You will see that the short answer to your question is probably No, and will also get a lot of very useful information.

 
Good point, is there a proper way to go from my VGA out to HDMI? Probably not directly, but rather from VGA to DVI, then from DVI to HDMI? I'm confused about the different types of DVI.
 
AFAIK AMD did not release an open spec for UVD... so the only way to actually get video acceleration with your UVD card is to play a DVD / HDDVD using an up to date version PowerDVD.
If you want to play an x264 mkv file in media player classic then you are out of luck, and your CPU would be used instead... this makes UVD a VERY limited use item... it is only for accelerating HDDVD and BluRay disks on a media center PC. nothing more.
 
Any chance AMD will release an open spec for UVD to accelerate HD playback thru media player classic? That would be nice... Does PV2 accelerate HD thru MPC?
 
Originally posted by: taltamir
AFAIK AMD did not release an open spec for UVD... so the only way to actually get video acceleration with your UVD card is to play a DVD / HDDVD using an up to date version PowerDVD.
If you want to play an x264 mkv file in media player classic then you are out of luck, and your CPU would be used instead... this makes UVD a VERY limited use item... it is only for accelerating HDDVD and BluRay disks on a media center PC. nothing more.
Click to expand...

I have ~5-10% CPU usage on each of my 4 cores playing 1080p quicktime trailers.
 
With the very low specs of your system, I'd spend as little as possible! 😉

I've had good results with both a 6200TC and an X1300. Both should be available for $25 or less used, here or on ebay. Your system just isnt powerful enough to warrant spending more money.

Normal DVD playback shouldn't be a problem on your system. HD...no chance so don't bother with a more powerful card trying to achieve the impossible.
 
Originally posted by: Binky
With the very low specs of your system, I'd spend as little as possible! 😉

I've had good results with both a 6200TC and an X1300. Both should be available for $25 or less used, here or on ebay. Your system just isnt powerful enough to warrant spending more money.

Normal DVD playback shouldn't be a problem on your system. HD...no chance so don't bother with a more powerful card trying to achieve the impossible.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:
 
Originally posted by: Binky
With the very low specs of your system, I'd spend as little as possible! 😉

I've had good results with both a 6200TC and an X1300. Both should be available for $25 or less used, here or on ebay. Your system just isnt powerful enough to warrant spending more money.

Normal DVD playback shouldn't be a problem on your system. HD...no chance so don't bother with a more powerful card trying to achieve the impossible.
Click to expand...

Thank you, I think that's where I'll end up going with this. Then add a bigger HD for storing flac files and I'll be all set.
 
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