No perfect graphics card yet?

[TheraEdge]

So we haven't found that one graphics card with a great TV output and passive cooling on a GPU that doesn't put off that much heat? That volari V3XT sounded like the perfect card for this, but it sounds like that one has way to many glitches with it to be that card. The GeForces all seem like they are going to put out a bunch of heat (that is what the GeForces love to do) that will need to be taken care of somehow, and passive syncs don't work so well if there is low to no air movement inside of the case. I don't know that much about ATIs but I do know that people have been burned by their support before.

So, anything seen any miricle card that handles all of that yet?

[something fishy]

The AGP version of the NVidia 6200 has a great s-video out; offers pixel adaptive deinterlacing, has great drivers and is passively cooled (and small).

It works well for me with Sage 4 via s-video and scaling to WXGA and outputting DVI but this is (PAL) std definition content; I don't know how it would fare with HDTV or at higher resolutions.

Eric

[korben_dallas]

My trusty built-by-ATI Radeon 9800 Pro has been fabulous with all versions of SageTV so far.

Pro's:
* Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer pumps heat out of case and its fan is near silent
* Component out via DVI-to-Component adapter
* Hardware accelerated with VMR9
* Works great with Nvidia Purevideo DVD/MPEG-2 codec

Con's:
* VGA Silencer means 2-slots occupied, and no possibility of being low profile
* Limited options for configuring component output in default ATI drivers
* Some functionality may be lost in Purevideo codec on ATI hardware

[pez]

According to NVidia you can use the PureVideo DVD decoder that enables advanced features in 6xxx and 7xxx cards. May not be a big deal for svideo though. I'm not HD yet, but pretty soon. I'd like to hear how well the de-interlacing works on SD content displayed on and HD monitor.

I'm considering the Rosewill 6200a as it has no fans and is cheap.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by pez

According to NVidia you can use the PureVideo DVD decoder that enables advanced features in 6xxx and 7xxx cards. May not be a big deal for svideo though. I'm not HD yet, but pretty soon. I'd like to hear how well the de-interlacing works on SD content displayed on and HD monitor.

Very well, about the best I've seen on a PC, and darn close to the Faroudja in my PJ (Actually better in some areas)

I'm considering the Rosewill 6200a as it has no fans and is cheap.

If you can, I'd strongly recommend getting a 6600 over the 6200, the 6600 will get you IVTC and Bad edit correction (sorry no direct link, do a search for bad edit). And if you stretch the 6600GT will get you full-blown deinterlacing of 1080i material, something very rare in the CE market. Here's a passive 6600GT:
AGP:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125179
PCIe:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125175

A Passive 6600
PCIe:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125184

[TheraEdge]

I think the 6600GT is out. That might be a passive heat sync, but it with it covering almost the whole card on the front and back I can't inagine that it is going to be cool inside a small client case. Plus anything with that much surface area is going to be putting off a ton of heat. The 6600 is a little smaller, but I still think it is going to have the same issue because GeForces just like to run hot. Cost isn't as much of a concern, but $166 is kind of pricey $94 is a little more in line...I mean I don't need all the gaming power of these new cards I just want a card that will do the multimedia part well. I don't need the other stuff. And actually I'm not even planing on watching DVDs with it because I have a separate DVD player, plus I plan on yanking the DVD drive to make more room for hard drives anyway.

I guess I'm just dissappointed that no manufacturer has yet put a good effort into the high end multimedia sector without all the other extra stuff.

For the $48 I am actually considering trying the V3XT just to see how it works for my application. I have seen a whole bunch of stuff that brings up some of the negative possibilities, but a lot of people that have enjoyed it too. Plus for the price I should work for my Standard Definition TV stuff for a while at least...maybe something better will come along at some point I guess.

[aperry]

Another potential issue with the 6600 is that I had a Hauppauge suggest not using that card if you have the PVR-500. He did not go into details, just that they don't recommend it.

[TheraEdge]

Nope, just using PVR-150MCEs I'm thinking about adding a 3rd one soon too...hope it will be easy to yank everything later and update the tuner's to HDTV tuners and the graphics card as well when someone finally makes that mirical card that runs really cold and is really great at displaying. The only dissapointing thing I am worried about with going to HDTV in the future is the concern that I will need a cable box or dish and it won't be as easy as adding another tuner like I do now. Maybe someone will make a tuner with the components that cable and satalite boxes have to tune channels...

Hmm, wasn't there a hauppauge card that had a video output too? Of course I was going to put that in a client PC later in its life if I ever save up for a client PC...

[flavius]

I'm quite happy with my ATI Radeon 9550, has been sitting in my xcube in the living room for five months now. Very quiet, not power-hungry.

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by TheraEdge

For the $48 I am actually considering trying the V3XT just to see how it works for my application. I have seen a whole bunch of stuff that brings up some of the negative possibilities, but a lot of people that have enjoyed it too. Plus for the price I should work for my Standard Definition TV stuff for a while at least...maybe something better will come along at some point I guess.

I don't think you'll like the performance of the V3XT. I bought one of the V5's and got horrible striping on fast movement and panning with it. I tried just about everything to fix it (different decoders, drivers, overlay/3d/FSE) and nohting would fix it. I will give them props though, it connected to my HDTV and set up was a breeze. Absolutely NO problems getting it to output to the TV. I also used it via SVid to a SD TV with the same striping. It's almost as if the DXVA acceleration isn't active on it, even though it's supported by the card and the decoders supposedly work with it as well...

Other than that it had beautiful picture..

[TheraEdge]

Hmm, that 9550 seems interesting, but I saw a guy on newegg was worried about the heat when he overclocked it (I know, he overclocked it, of course he is worried about heat) but I don't want to have to get to much air moving through this client I'm planing on building...hoping I could just do something simple like a couple of 120 MM fans modded into the back to pull air though it at a constant pace...a coupld of quiet ones should work real nice just to keep air moving, but I can't have serious heat parts haning out in there...

Hmm, stripping when the video moved fast huh? and this wasn't from the encoders right? Just the card not getting along to well with the decoder huh?

[heffe2001]

As far as I could tell it was the card (I put my 5900XT back in, and it worked perfectly fine with SD content, where the V5 stripped the output, tried it in 3 different machines, with the same results. Also tried newer drivers, older drivers, same outout). I replaced both of those cards with a HIS x700 IceQ ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161147 ), and everything has been absolutely perfect since. For an AGP card, this thing performs great.

[TheraEdge]

Man, that thing is honking big! How loud it is? I mean I don't need that much power I don't think. What would the toned down version of that be?

That 9550 looks kind of nice and so does the 6200...what is a 6200SE though, and the only 6200A I found has a fan on it..I thought they weren't supposed to have fans.

The 5200s look pretty good to, and really low price, but I did see someone mention heat on one of them. Can anyone tell me what if anything I would be giving up by just getting a 5200?

Also opinions on the rest of these cards would be great too...

[flavius]

FX5200? I own several, and tried the most recent one when I started working on my first HTPC. S-Video? No. Component or HDMI. You'll see the difference on a high-end TV. Before I got the 9550, I tried a 6600GT - but that one requires a 350 watt PSU.
Note: recording quality is also important. Anything less than DVD Standard (for non-animation) I wouldn' want to watch. Driver support? I hadn't touched anything made by ATI in years. Well, this one works ok.

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by TheraEdge

Man, that thing is honking big! How loud it is? I mean I don't need that much power I don't think. What would the toned down version of that be?

That 9550 looks kind of nice and so does the 6200...what is a 6200SE though, and the only 6200A I found has a fan on it..I thought they weren't supposed to have fans.

The 5200s look pretty good to, and really low price, but I did see someone mention heat on one of them. Can anyone tell me what if anything I would be giving up by just getting a 5200?

Also opinions on the rest of these cards would be great too...

I have a 5200 in one of my client PC's, and between it and the Celeron 2.6 that's in it, it just can't keep up with HD content (micro stutters about every 1-2 seconds). I've also got a 5900XT in a machine (1.6ghz P4, 768mb ram), which once overclocked a tad seems to play HD content fairly well on a SD TV (with stock speeds, it stuttered about every 3-4 seconds).

The x700 card above is actually whisper silent (it's designed for that, big fan move slowly, but moves alot of air, bet you can't hear it over whatever processor/power supply fans you have). Improved my HD content output to a 1080i RCA HDTV 100%. Works perfectly, without stutter. (I'm using an older version of the Elecard moonlight decoders on this, for some reason the nvidia purevideo introduces a tad bit of stutter on this machine.

(The NVIDIA cards I use almost all have the latest drivers on them, and the x700 has the latest ATI drivers. Anybody know of any ATI driver tweaks for TV output, the TV tools that come with their drivers don't give much in the way of ease-of-usability).

Now I just need one more PC and a PVR500 so I can set up a dedicated MVP server, and have a couple more analog tuners for the kids TV's and the ability to dedicate a tuner to each of them specifically and I'm set .

[TheraEdge]

What was up with the reviews on newegg saying that, that card didn't come with the power hookup cable it required though. Plus I'm not really to HDTV quite yet, and I was planing on trying to passivly cool pretty much everything else in the case, so I am betting the way that fan is configured, I'd hear it. I'm hoping to run a moble processor to try to cut down on heat in the client eventually. Every time I get into the mood to start putting one togehter though, I hit this roadblock of there not being the perfect parts I want to put this thing together. It's so dissapointing.

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by TheraEdge

What was up with the reviews on newegg saying that, that card didn't come with the power hookup cable it required though. Plus I'm not really to HDTV quite yet, and I was planing on trying to passivly cool pretty much everything else in the case, so I am betting the way that fan is configured, I'd hear it. I'm hoping to run a moble processor to try to cut down on heat in the client eventually. Every time I get into the mood to start putting one togehter though, I hit this roadblock of there not being the perfect parts I want to put this thing together. It's so dissapointing.

It's possible you'd hear the fan, but at ANY distance, I'm betting not. As for the power connector, it uses a smaller floppy-style 4 pin connector. They basically were bitching about it not having a larger 4 pin to smaller 4 pin adapter. You might want to check out some reviews of the heatsink and see how others rate it's noisyness though . And although you're not too concerned with HD now, I myself wish I had bought a bit better components for some of my systems when I got them, I'd not have to be spending money now to upgrade them .

[TheraEdge]

I also see that they have a 9550 too, but that one doesn't seem to have the HDTV output. I just think it is overkill for me now, plus I'm not sure if I am going to do a low profile case yet or not, so I'm not so sure about these 2 slot cards. It is nice to know that someone is realizing that there are users out there that want the same cards without all the noise. I like that part. I guess I'm still way up in the air, and I put some serious newegging in tonight to see what they had available. I mean right now I'm still on extended basic cable, so HDTV is kind of wasted here. I am hoping there is an easy way to do multipul tuners in the future when we all go to HDTV service, but until them I'm pretty happy. Just was wishing I could get a good priced card that was going to last for a while and maybe even be able to output HDTV to my future setup. Man, I can't imagine running all those PCs for SageTV. That is why I have my dedicated server right now, which is running 2 tuners, and possibly 3 in the not to distant future...might add a dual tuner card for good measure though. Basically I'd like to get my client PC started too, but this graphics card seems to be where I keep getting hung up. If I could find the prefect card I could plan the rest of the system around it probably pretty easy after deciding on the case, but this card keeps spinning my head, and I end up waiting a little bit to see if anything develops and it never really seems to.

[flavius]

If you have a store with a good return policy close by - why not get a card and try it out? I still enjoy those completely wasted Saturday afternoons..
You can still buy at Newegg.