[mythtv-users] Suspect video card inadequate -- confirm?

[Craig Huff]

It seems my disk drive was the victim, not the perpetrator.  I rebuilt my FE
with MythDora on another disk drive and it started crashing again (screen
corruption and subsequent system lockups).

I had to send back my FE motherboard for a warranty replacement, so I'll
be watching shows on the 17" vga monitor until it gets back, unless...

Dr. Frankenstein (me) got the bright idea that I have an old Gigabyte
GA7-DX motherboard with an Athlon 2600 cpu, a mini-tower case and
a spare power supply (with a noisy fan) laying around.  I thought I'd put
them all together with 512MB of PC2100 ram and a "retired, but working"
10GB Quantum PATA drive and the original Nvidia 2MX AGP 4x video
card with S-Video support.

I got it all working and loaded MythDora 4 using the DVD drive from the
"brainless" FE system using the default partitioning.  But...

When I go into the recordings listing, it takes an interminable time to
respond to the next command, even from the keyboard I still have
attached.  I noticed that the preview for the currently selected recording
doesn't show and if I try to watch the recordings, I get a black screen
for something like 30 - 60 seconds (maybe more) and then I'm back in the
recordings menu.

So, is my supposition correct that, while the rest of the system is probably
ok for watching SD over S-Video, I need to get a newer video card?  If so,
I'm thinking I should go for a PCI card rather than an AGP card, for future
flexibility.  Is a PCI GeForce FX 5200 with 128MB good enough?  Should I
go up to a 256MB GeForce 6200?

OT1H, I may just keep my $$ and wait for the motherboard (or more likely
its replacement) to come back from the surgeon and OTOH, I kinda like the
idea of having another FE.

What do you folks advise, as far as whether the AGP card is inadequate to
the task and if so, why the 5200 or the 6200 is the better replacement?

Craig.
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