Avermedia A180 vs' Fusion-5 Lite

[aglennon]

I want to add an HD tuner card to my Sage server. Is there any advantage to using the Fusion-5 over the A180 or vise-versa?

Should I expect to have any problems running this card in a server already containing (2) PVR-150's (old heat-sink model).

Thanks,
Anthony

[paulbeers]

Avermeida 180 or FusionLite 5 is one of those "which is your favorite..." type questions.

I own a fusionlite 5 because I needed a low profile card and it was on sale at the website I purchased it from back in September. I think either card is just about as popular. The one thing I like about the fusion5 card is that it comes with a piece of software that checks signal strength which is really nice for me since I just use a simple indoor antennae for my ota hdtv and sometimes my wife (or sometimes me) accidently bumps it and I have to reposition the antennae to get the best possible signal. Otherwise either is fine. I probably would have just picked up the a180 if I hadn't needed a low profile card at the time. The only other advantage is that the fusionlite does support Qam tuning. While it is not currently supported in Sage right now, it is nice to know that if it ever is, I can just use my current card.

Just my .02 worth.

[Ghost]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

I own a fusionlite 5 because I needed a low profile card and it was on sale at the website I purchased it from back in September.

Where did you find the low profile version? I am looking to get this card. Also, what case are you using it in?

[wazkaren]

I have one of each of these cards and I would recommend both. As paulbeers mentioned the Fusion comes with a signal strength checker that I found very useful when setting up my antenna initially. But on other hand I did have some crashing issues with the Fusion in Sage (Fusion driver issues), but I seem to have those issues resolved now. I discovered that if I turned on Hyper-threading the Fusion would crash when run together with the Avermedia. I also had much better luck when I disabled ACPI in BIOS and assigned IRQs directly to the cards, instead of the shared IRQs that ACPI uses. There's my 2 cents.

Greg

[paulbeers]

All fusionlite's are low profile as far as I know. The Avermeida 180 is a full heigh PCI, but I think all fusion cards are (even the fusion gold). I was using it an old FIC Saber 815 SFF computer. Unfortunately I was finding it was causing some heat issues with 3 cards crammed into the tiny Saber 815, so I upgraded my main box and moved my "old" main box as my new server (oh and added 2 new tuners). The tiny 815 had a low profile PCI slot and 2 regular PCI slots that were used up with my Avermedia M150's (that I have now given to my parents and I picked up the PVR 150's).