I need to buy a graphics card for a new system I'm assembling, taking my first baby steps into quiet computing. I'm not aiming for a whiz-bang-modded-totally-silent system, only a quiet and not too expensive one. My requirements for the graphics card are:
- DVI output
- TV tuner
- 3D performance is nice, but not very important
I was thinking about buying a Radeon 9000 AIW, but then noticed a nasty looking fan on it. Browsing around on this forum, it seems to be quite loud too. Or is it loud only when under load, i.e. playing games?
I found out that some GeForce 5200 FX Personal Cinema cards are passively cooled. However, these reviews say that the ATI software is way better (and I usually trust Anandtech). Since I will be using the TV and recording features quite much (living in a 10 m^2 box you don't want both a monitor and a tv taking up space), software that Simply Works would mean quite much to me.
What are your opinions and experiences on this? Should I go for ATI or NVidia, or are there other solutions that would suit me?
El-cheapo graphics card with TV tuner: ATI or NVidia?
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Glad you asked!
Since it seems like video/tv is primary concern for you I would recommend an ATI card. If you look at the home theater pc (HTPC) section of the avsforum website you will they all use ATI cards. I recently tried an ATI 7500 against a GF4 Ti200 on a big screen TV and the quality of the ATI was vastly superior.
Instead of boring you with the details (unless you want them) I will say that the Nvidia cards are less problematic than the ATI card when it comes to software / drivers. That's my experience. Everytime I say this I get about 20 people screaming that I'm a moron who doesn't know what he's doing because ATI cards are flawless. Everyone's experience will be different. Gamers don't have too much trouble with ATI but HTPC users do.
It's not clear how far you want to go with the tv aspects of this pc. The idea of a HTPC might be overkill right now but you never know. Having a pc that can record your shows, archive them, do timeshifting like a Tivo and other stuff is nice.
Assuming you want just the minimum I would first recommend a passively cooled ATI card. There is a thread that lists these but generally you can get like a 9200 for this (with DVI I think). Next, you might take a look at the Hauppage cards for TV. It can get expensive here. I love my pvr250 but it costs around $150. You can get a simple tuner card from Hauppage for around $30. I like Hauppage because I didn't have any trouble with their software but I had fits with the MMC software that ATI gives with their AIW cards. I've now concluded that it's best to stay away from multipurpose cards.
One thing to remember is that your primary display card (goes in the AGP slot) handles sending the signal to your monitor. A separate tv tuner card can go in a PCI slot. It takes the cable signal and routes it to your primary display card. Sometimes people think if they get a tuner card it will also do their display - which isn't true unless you get something like the AIW.
A final thing to consider is separate software for the tv chores. I have something called BeyondTV but there are others (SageTV and ShowShifter to name a few). These software packages can make it really fun and easy to use the tv tuner card. The software packages don't always work with all tv cards so you need to be careful. Most have a 15 day demo period though so it's easy to give it a try.
HTH
Since it seems like video/tv is primary concern for you I would recommend an ATI card. If you look at the home theater pc (HTPC) section of the avsforum website you will they all use ATI cards. I recently tried an ATI 7500 against a GF4 Ti200 on a big screen TV and the quality of the ATI was vastly superior.
Instead of boring you with the details (unless you want them) I will say that the Nvidia cards are less problematic than the ATI card when it comes to software / drivers. That's my experience. Everytime I say this I get about 20 people screaming that I'm a moron who doesn't know what he's doing because ATI cards are flawless. Everyone's experience will be different. Gamers don't have too much trouble with ATI but HTPC users do.
It's not clear how far you want to go with the tv aspects of this pc. The idea of a HTPC might be overkill right now but you never know. Having a pc that can record your shows, archive them, do timeshifting like a Tivo and other stuff is nice.
Assuming you want just the minimum I would first recommend a passively cooled ATI card. There is a thread that lists these but generally you can get like a 9200 for this (with DVI I think). Next, you might take a look at the Hauppage cards for TV. It can get expensive here. I love my pvr250 but it costs around $150. You can get a simple tuner card from Hauppage for around $30. I like Hauppage because I didn't have any trouble with their software but I had fits with the MMC software that ATI gives with their AIW cards. I've now concluded that it's best to stay away from multipurpose cards.
One thing to remember is that your primary display card (goes in the AGP slot) handles sending the signal to your monitor. A separate tv tuner card can go in a PCI slot. It takes the cable signal and routes it to your primary display card. Sometimes people think if they get a tuner card it will also do their display - which isn't true unless you get something like the AIW.
A final thing to consider is separate software for the tv chores. I have something called BeyondTV but there are others (SageTV and ShowShifter to name a few). These software packages can make it really fun and easy to use the tv tuner card. The software packages don't always work with all tv cards so you need to be careful. Most have a 15 day demo period though so it's easy to give it a try.
HTH
Re: El-cheapo graphics card with TV tuner: ATI or NVidia?
I have one of these and I've only recently taken the fan off. It is only noisy if you already have a really quiet system (I only noticed it when the only other fans in my system were undervolted Panaflos).f97magu wrote:I was thinking about buying a Radeon 9000 AIW, but then noticed a nasty looking fan on it. Browsing around on this forum, it seems to be quite loud too. Or is it loud only when under load, i.e. playing games?
You can replace the fan with a passive heatsink, although it will invalidate your warranty and is not for the fainthearted!
Thanks for the comments. An AIW 7500 would fit my requirements, but they don't seem to be available where I live (Austria). So it will be either the 9000 AIW or a passively cooled cheap ATI non-aiw card and separate TV card.
PretzelB: What are advantages of the more luxurious Hauppage TV cards? I don't care much about stereo sound and FM tuners. How well does timeshifting, recording etc work without hardware MPEG encoding?
PretzelB: What are advantages of the more luxurious Hauppage TV cards? I don't care much about stereo sound and FM tuners. How well does timeshifting, recording etc work without hardware MPEG encoding?
I'm glad you asked. If you have any plans on doing timeshifiting then you should seriously consider a pvr250 or pvr350. The software I use (BeyondTV) will create a buffer of live TV and then show you the recorded piece. This means you're constantly watching a video recording (Tivo must do this too). With the AIW 7500 this was impossible - well in reality it was very jerky. My guess is that any all in one solution card won't be able to hack it. You can watch live TV with no problem, you just can't record and watch at the same time.f97magu wrote:Thanks for the comments. An AIW 7500 would fit my requirements, but they don't seem to be available where I live (Austria). So it will be either the 9000 AIW or a passively cooled cheap ATI non-aiw card and separate TV card.
PretzelB: What are advantages of the more luxurious Hauppage TV cards? I don't care much about stereo sound and FM tuners. How well does timeshifting, recording etc work without hardware MPEG encoding?
This didn't bother me much but BeyondTV does timeshifting as default - you can't turn it off. I don't know what other packages do (ShowShifter, SageTV) but with my AIW 7500 I could not watch TV with the BeyondTV software. With the pvr250, it all worked great.
If you search the snapstream.com forums you will see many people talking about performance of live TV. You will probably see more examples of people with different equipment from mine, which should give you more info.
One thing that surprised me was the number of people who were concerned about how much cpu time was consumed by their pc while recording. My HTPC is dedicated so I don't have it doing much else but I guess others like it to perform two things at once. From what I've read, the only way to keep the cpu usage down while recording is to get a hardware decoder card. I think all the ATI cards are software (but don't forget that ATI is the best when it comes to picture quality).
There might be better hardware encoding cards out there, I just happen to own the pvr250. BTW, the pvr350 is supposed to decode also but you have to be careful that the software supports it. If hardware encoding is something you might be interested it, try the forums for products like BeyondTV or maybe the hard core AV folks at avsforums.com.
HTH
My 9000 AIW is fanless. I just picked it up about a month ago.
It's an awesome little package for around $140, especially with the RF remote. I don't use mine for gaming (at all...it's in my home server which doubles up as my workbench PC/TV), though my old card in my main rig was a passive 9000; the 9000 isn't a super gamer but it's not horrible for the odd MOH:AA rampage
Pete
It's an awesome little package for around $140, especially with the RF remote. I don't use mine for gaming (at all...it's in my home server which doubles up as my workbench PC/TV), though my old card in my main rig was a passive 9000; the 9000 isn't a super gamer but it's not horrible for the odd MOH:AA rampage
Pete