[mythtv-users] Video Card Usage

Mon Oct 15 04:57:47 UTC 2007

One thing for you to keep in mind is that if the support for the 350 is
going away, then so will the demand. If you ever plan on upgrading your
computer and going to HD, it might be nice to be able to ebay your tuner. A
150 or 250 is much easier to offload on ebay.

I recently installed myth on a pentium III 700mhz with 256mb ram, and the
system played back 6000kbps mpeg 2 video and used only around 15% of the
cpu. I thought that was pretty good. It had an ati video card in it.

My two cents for you.
-Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Timothy M. Admire
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 9:46 PM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Video Card Usage

Thanks all.

The problem with picking up a better video card, that I see, is that it will
still leave quite a bit of work to the CPU.  I want to minimize CPU use as
much as possible and my understanding is that the PVR350 would completely
take that decoding load off of the CPU.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  The
difference in price between buying a better video card and the PVR 150 as
opposed to buying the PVR350 is minimal, so whichever would be best with an
Athlon 600 and 768MB of RAM is the direction I want to go. 

It was mentioned that the PVR350 support was going away soon... is that for
sure, and if so, would that render the 350's decoder completely useless in
the future, or would it just not see any additional development?  I'm trying
to make a good decision here, but I don't want to spend more than the price
of a 350 and I also do not want to buy a new CPU and mobo right now. 

Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks,

Tim

On 10/14/07, Marc <drayson at net1plus.com > wrote: 

> If I remember right, the old card I am going to use is a Gainward
> branded Geforce 2 with 64MB of ram (could be 32 though).  Would this be
> able to handle the decoding job?  I really do not want to leave it to
> the CPU.
>
> --
> Timothy M. Admire . Tel 707-529-4564 . tim.admire at gmail.com
>
> This message is confidential.
> This message sent via a Palm Treo Smartphone.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Marc" < drayson at net1plus.com>
> Date: Sunday, Oct 14, 2007 11:52 am
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Video Card Usage
> To: "'Discussion about mythtv'" < mythtv-users at mythtv.org>Reply-To:
> Discussion about mythtv <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
>
> OK.  I have an NVIDIA card that is a few years old that was a nice card 
> and has svideo out... Would it be better to use that?  I need to keep
> the load off the CPU as it is only 600mhz...
>
> --
> Timothy M. Admire . Tel 707-529-4564 . tim.admire at gmail.com
>
> This message is confidential.
> This message sent via a Palm Treo Smartphone.
> -----Original Message-----
>
> On Sunday 14 October 2007 13:02:11 Timothy M. Admire wrote: 
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I am in the process of putting together a MythTV system with a
> > Hauppage PVR-350 in order to do the encoding and decoding of the
> > MPEG-2 video.  I am wondering if, since this card does the encoding 
> > and output of the video, will the video card itself be doing much
> > work?  My GeForce card has an onboard fan, but I'd like to disconnect
> > that if the card is not going to be using much horsepower. 
>
> Note that support for video output via the PVR-350 is slated to go away
> at some point. Thus, although this solution will work in the short
> term, it might not be wise to plan on using this configuration for the 
> long term.
>
> --
> Rod Smith
> http://www.rodsbooks.com
> _______________________________________________
>
> Tim,
>
> What type of nVidia card? We need more information. 
> I have an GeForce 5700LE with a P4 3.2E CPU.
> I was able to do full HD off of the CPU without issue, using 80%+ of
> the CPU. I just recently switched to use XvMC offloading the video
> processing to the GeForce card and am now using between 20 and 40% of 
> the CPU power. I haven't checked what I use with SD recordings yet but
> I would believe that its down to around 5 - 15%.
>
> Marc
>
>
> _______________________________________________ 

I haven't used a GeForce 2 for anything in years. I believe it is too slow
for Myth.
What type of CPU do you have?

This page on the Wiki http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Todd_Coffey says
he had a 1GHz AMD Duron with a Geforce2 MX400 and it was too slow.
May want to talk a look at a power powerful video card, I recommend a
GeForce 5700LE or higher myself. 
You can pick up a 6200 card, for cheap if you know where to look.

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