Home Theatre PC Video Cards

I'm designing a HTPC to be resonably powerful yet low-powered and
quiet. There are now Pentium M motherboards which look good but which
only have 4xAGP slots. AGP versions of the GeForce 6600 (which has
very nice HDTV MPEG hardware decoding) are just about to be released
but I've only seen 8xAGP compatibility advertised.

Anyone like to guess at the chances of a GeForce 6600 AGP card working
in a 4xAGP slot? The GeForce 6800 cards (which are all AGP) are noted
as being 4x and 8x compatible so I'm hopeful. BTW, I don't want to
use the 6800 cards because they draw obscene amounts of power (and
cash).

"James Ashton" wrote in message
om...
I'm designing a HTPC to be resonably powerful yet low-powered and
quiet. There are now Pentium M motherboards which look good but which
only have 4xAGP slots. AGP versions of the GeForce 6600 (which has
very nice HDTV MPEG hardware decoding) are just about to be released
but I've only seen 8xAGP compatibility advertised.

Anyone like to guess at the chances of a GeForce 6600 AGP card working
in a 4xAGP slot? The GeForce 6800 cards (which are all AGP) are noted
as being 4x and 8x compatible so I'm hopeful. BTW, I don't want to
use the 6800 cards because they draw obscene amounts of power (and
cash).

Dunno how you know about 1 and not the other. Without any googling, like
yourself, I'd say about 100% certain.

"Byron Forbes" wrote in message ...
"James Ashton" wrote in message
om...
I'm designing a HTPC to be resonably powerful yet low-powered and
quiet. There are now Pentium M motherboards which look good but which
only have 4xAGP slots. AGP versions of the GeForce 6600 (which has
very nice HDTV MPEG hardware decoding) are just about to be released
but I've only seen 8xAGP compatibility advertised.

Anyone like to guess at the chances of a GeForce 6600 AGP card working
in a 4xAGP slot? The GeForce 6800 cards (which are all AGP) are noted
as being 4x and 8x compatible so I'm hopeful. BTW, I don't want to
use the 6800 cards because they draw obscene amounts of power (and
cash).

Dunno how you know about 1 and not the other. Without any googling, like
yourself, I'd say about 100% certain.

The GeForce 6800 cards are native AGP so that any PCI express versions
use a bridge chip. The GeForce 6600 are native PCI express so the
very new AGP versions that are just going on sale use a bridge chip.
So there's plently of scope for the AGP compatibility to be different.

I can't find any information on either nvidia's or any of the card
manufacturer's web sites about whether the GeForce 6600 AGP cards will
work in 4xAGP slots. I thought maybe someone with a good knowledge of
AGP compatibility issues might be able to give me an answer.

"James Ashton" wrote in message
om...
"Byron Forbes" wrote in message
...
"James Ashton" wrote in message
om...
I'm designing a HTPC to be resonably powerful yet low-powered and
quiet. There are now Pentium M motherboards which look good but which
only have 4xAGP slots. AGP versions of the GeForce 6600 (which has
very nice HDTV MPEG hardware decoding) are just about to be released
but I've only seen 8xAGP compatibility advertised.

Anyone like to guess at the chances of a GeForce 6600 AGP card working
in a 4xAGP slot? The GeForce 6800 cards (which are all AGP) are noted
as being 4x and 8x compatible so I'm hopeful. BTW, I don't want to
use the 6800 cards because they draw obscene amounts of power (and
cash).

Dunno how you know about 1 and not the other. Without any googling,
like
yourself, I'd say about 100% certain.

The GeForce 6800 cards are native AGP so that any PCI express versions
use a bridge chip. The GeForce 6600 are native PCI express so the
very new AGP versions that are just going on sale use a bridge chip.
So there's plently of scope for the AGP compatibility to be different.

I can't find any information on either nvidia's or any of the card
manufacturer's web sites about whether the GeForce 6600 AGP cards will
work in 4xAGP slots. I thought maybe someone with a good knowledge of
AGP compatibility issues might be able to give me an answer.

FWIW, 8X cards work in 4X slots so I'd be surprised if it didn't - the
whole idea of making an AGP version being to get more sales. Just limits max
bandwidth potential and probably will disallow a few DX9/16X/8X features of
the card.

Byron Forbes wrote:


"James Ashton" wrote in message
om...
"Byron Forbes" wrote in message

...
"James Ashton" wrote in message
om...
I'm designing a HTPC to be resonably powerful yet low-powered and
quiet. There are now Pentium M motherboards which look good but
which
only have 4xAGP slots. AGP versions of the GeForce 6600 (which has
very nice HDTV MPEG hardware decoding) are just about to be released
but I've only seen 8xAGP compatibility advertised.

Anyone like to guess at the chances of a GeForce 6600 AGP card
working
in a 4xAGP slot? The GeForce 6800 cards (which are all AGP) are
noted
as being 4x and 8x compatible so I'm hopeful. BTW, I don't want to
use the 6800 cards because they draw obscene amounts of power (and
cash).

Dunno how you know about 1 and not the other. Without any googling,
like
yourself, I'd say about 100% certain.

The GeForce 6800 cards are native AGP so that any PCI express versions
use a bridge chip. The GeForce 6600 are native PCI express so the
very new AGP versions that are just going on sale use a bridge chip.
So there's plently of scope for the AGP compatibility to be different.

I can't find any information on either nvidia's or any of the card
manufacturer's web sites about whether the GeForce 6600 AGP cards will
work in 4xAGP slots. I thought maybe someone with a good knowledge of
AGP compatibility issues might be able to give me an answer.

FWIW, 8X cards work in 4X slots so I'd be surprised if it didn't - the
whole idea of making an AGP version being to get more sales. Just limits
max bandwidth potential and probably will disallow a few DX9/16X/8X
features of the card.

What "features" would those be?

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Video cards back to the early ATI Radeons have included MPEG2 hardware
acceleration (iDCT and motion compensation). The Nvidia GeForce4MX,
GeForce FX, and newer cards also support hardware MPEG2 acceleration.

I have used a Radeon 8500, 9600, GeForce4 MX; and I currently use a
GeForce FX 5200 for hardware accelerated HDTV MPEG playback with
FusionHDTV cards. All worked fine. The vast majority of features in
new video cards are for 3D gaming, and are irrelevant for HTPCs.

I chose my FX 5200 because it was fanless, which to me is very
important to have a quiet machine for HTPC use. Also, it has good
Linux support, with drivers that implement MPEG2 acceleration in
Linux.. Someday I hope to move off Windows completely and use the HDTV
card from pchdtv.com with MythTV.


Some of the newer video cards have made claims about new features, like
the ones below. But, as far as I have read, they seem to be more vapor
than reality at this point.
- MPEG4 hardware acceleration
- WMV hardware acceleration
- MPEG2 hardware encoder


On 2004-11-12 23:17:40 -0800, (James Ashton) said:

I'm designing a HTPC to be resonably powerful yet low-powered and
quiet. There are now Pentium M motherboards which look good but which
only have 4xAGP slots. AGP versions of the GeForce 6600 (which has
very nice HDTV MPEG hardware decoding) are just about to be released
but I've only seen 8xAGP compatibility advertised.

Anyone like to guess at the chances of a GeForce 6600 AGP card working
in a 4xAGP slot? The GeForce 6800 cards (which are all AGP) are noted
as being 4x and 8x compatible so I'm hopeful. BTW, I don't want to
use the 6800 cards because they draw obscene amounts of power (and
cash).

Phil wrote in message news:2004111514211169249%[email protected] m...
Video cards back to the early ATI Radeons have included MPEG2 hardware
acceleration (iDCT and motion compensation). The Nvidia GeForce4MX,
GeForce FX, and newer cards also support hardware MPEG2 acceleration.

I have used a Radeon 8500, 9600, GeForce4 MX; and I currently use a
GeForce FX 5200 for hardware accelerated HDTV MPEG playback with
FusionHDTV cards. All worked fine. The vast majority of features in
new video cards are for 3D gaming, and are irrelevant for HTPCs.

I chose my FX 5200 because it was fanless, which to me is very
important to have a quiet machine for HTPC use. Also, it has good
Linux support, with drivers that implement MPEG2 acceleration in
Linux.. Someday I hope to move off Windows completely and use the HDTV
card from pchdtv.com with MythTV.

I come from a land down-under where we have DVB. There are several
DVB HDTV PCI cards available here with some claiming linux support but
I have a feeling that I'll be forced to Windows to get the HTPC
features I want; at least at first.

Some of the newer video cards have made claims about new features, like
the ones below. But, as far as I have read, they seem to be more vapor
than reality at this point.
- MPEG4 hardware acceleration
- WMV hardware acceleration
- MPEG2 hardware encoder

I'm not especially interested in these features for my HTPC yet either
(though I think I might someday find them useful) but the `advanced
adaptive de-interlacing technology [that] provides smooth playback on
progressive displays' does sound worth-while. I'll be looking to view
1080i HDTV and all kinds of DVDs on a 720p projector so `high-quality
video scaling and filtering' will be good too.

I also like the fanless FX5200 cards but I doubt the scaling and
de-interlacing quality is as good as the 6600 cards. I've bought
dozens of Dell boxes with fanless, Dual-DVI FX5200 cards and they do
have a high failure rate (over 20%) which I think is due to marginal
thermal design. For a HTPC, were ambient temperatures could well be
higher than in an office environment, this is not good.

If the GeForce 6600 fan turns out to be too loud I can wait for Zalman
or someone to come up with a fanless heat-pipe or roll my own or
something. They should run cooler than the 6800 cards and, in any
case, just doing MPEG decoding, deinterlacing and scaling won't
exercise the really power-hungry parts of the chip.

In article ,
James Ashton wrote:
I come from a land down-under where we have DVB. There are several
DVB HDTV PCI cards available here with some claiming linux support but
I have a feeling that I'll be forced to Windows to get the HTPC
features I want; at least at first.

You can do a full PVR on Linux with a DVB-T card. If anything, the
PVR/HTPC software available for Linux is *better* than the stuff you
can get for Windows, at least in functionality terms. The sticking
point is installation.

As for output devices, I've been pretty happy with a second-hand
Matrox G400. The picture quality is quite good, and MPEG2 decoding
is a small enough job that even if you get one without the decoder
it shouldn't really matter much. Or if it's all MPEG2 a second-hand
DXR3 can be an excellent choice.

Matt

Matt McLeod wrote in message ...
In article ,
James Ashton wrote:
I come from a land down-under where we have DVB. There are several
DVB HDTV PCI cards available here with some claiming linux support but
I have a feeling that I'll be forced to Windows to get the HTPC
features I want; at least at first.

You can do a full PVR on Linux with a DVB-T card. If anything, the
PVR/HTPC software available for Linux is *better* than the stuff you
can get for Windows, at least in functionality terms. The sticking
point is installation.

I'm reasonably confident about being able to get this stuff installed
under Linux. My biggest issue with going the Linux route for HTPC is
the DVD player software. I don't think it can compete with what's
available for windows.

As for output devices, I've been pretty happy with a second-hand
Matrox G400. The picture quality is quite good, and MPEG2 decoding
is a small enough job that even if you get one without the decoder
it shouldn't really matter much. Or if it's all MPEG2 a second-hand
DXR3 can be an excellent choice.

I have a feeling that doing things like picture-in-picture from two
separate HDTV streams won't be possible on a Pentium M 2.0GHz system
without hardware support for the MPEG decoding.