Video Card choosing blues....please help..

[capn12]

OK, I wanna have the benefits of the 9800 AIW Pro, that being the digital video recording ability, with my cable line running through my PC. The remote it comes with, along with the ON Demand listings are MAIN reasons I love this card. Drawback is that its only 128 MB. BUT, I also like the nVidia FX 5900 due to the fact that their 256 MB version is what I really want. Whats the best way to go about the desire for a 256 MB video card, and having the DVR ability?? Thanks folks.

 

[QAGuy]

There are standalone cards that you can buy for this. In fact, I would recommend a standalone over a combination card, like the AIW, since you can keep them even when you upgrade your main video card.

 

[capn12]

I'm not too familiar with any of the standalone cards...am in the process of building my desktop, and wanted to see what was available. The features on the AIW cards are very appealing to me, but I would rather have the 256MB video card as a base

 

[kza]

You should try to get a HDTV tuner card. That's the way to go. Let me know if you can find it for cheap.

Also, make sure it's a real HDTV and not DTV.

 

[mikeford]

Depending on what you use, cable, satellite, or off air, the best choices are different.

Sat is a no brainer, go to CC and get the TIVO box for directtv that like $99.

For off the air, you need a HDTV receiver, and there are some specific cards that work OK.

For cable due to the digital crap your choices are limited, since everything HD is going through their boxes. The service I get, TimeWarner in Socal, has 3 flavors of signal coming to my house, the first 99 channels in analog that my vcr and AIW Radeon can tune directly, so called digital cable which includes all the 99 analog channels plus a mix of a couple hundred more digital channels plus the premium movie channels and all that must go through the cable box and comes out Svhs, AV, and channel 3 which goes into the AIW, but changing channels is so far manual, finally the HDTV is just a different model of digital cable box (that I haven't decided is worth $6.95 a month more to me) with typical HDTV outputs, which I don't think my old Radeon AIW will accept anyway.

Having used the Radeon AIW, my advice would be to buy the $42 (currently $47, but on sale frequently) http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=14-122-132&depa=1 card at newegg.

 

[VIAN]

It is called the TV Wonder from ATI, pick it up, then buy yourself a nice FX 5900 Ultra

 

[BudAshes]

i dont think you have to worry about the 256 megs of ram being a problem. The 64 mb geforce 4 ti 4200 run just as fast as there 128 mb counter parts and the newer video cards have showed the same thing. More ram really wont make a difference. Just get the all in wonder and you are all set.

 

[smittybg]

there isnt a game that uses 256 RAM , i dont really half the games out use 64 , so dont buy a video card based on how much ram it has

 

[bandana163]

+64MB on a 8500LE is nearly insignificant. It's like those 128MB GF3 Ti200s. Extra memory = lower OC potential in most cases.

 

[CtK]

Originally posted by: mikeford
Sat is a no brainer, go to CC and get the TIVO box for directtv that like $99.

can you please provide a link i cant find any TIVO boxes at CC for $99

thanks