[mythtv-users] Done with ATI

[Stephen Shelton]

On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:07:12 -0500
Stephen Shelton <stephen at stephenashelton.com> wrote:

> I've been really beating my head against the wall on some certain issues, mostly due to the mistake
> that was buying an ATI card.
> 
> I'm done with ATI. The open source drivers look promising, but I'm not going to sit around waiting
> for them.
> 
> I'd like to buy a nvidia card that:
> 
> 1) is cheap
> 2) is pci-e x1 or x16
> 3) has HDMI out (preferably with a low profile bracket, not a must)
> 4) can render uncompressed 1080p video flawlessly
> 5) is passively cooled
> 
> If anyone has had experience with such a card, please let me know what that card is!
> 
> Or, if you've managed to check #4 off the list with any particular chip, let me know what that is -
> that's an effective starting point.
> 
> Thanks a lot!
> 
> -- 
> Stephen Shelton
> stephen at stephenashelton.com
> http://www.stephenashelton.com/

Just thought I'd follow up. I purchased a Gigabyte GeForce 9500 GT card. I 
applied the VDPAU patches to mythtv and it runs like a champ. No tearing 
whatsoever, not so much as a hiccup in video, using the "Advanced 2X (HW)" 
deinterlacer. My cpu runs, on average, around 15% utilization, and with some 
cpu scaling, never needs to leave its lowest speed. (It's a dual core AMD Athlon 
64 5000+)

Using a kill-a-watt, I see that my machine idles around 70w and while playing 
back HD runs around 85w.

The only problem I had was getting the card to display a 1080i output. 
Fortunately, the ati card this replaced did a good job with this display, so I 
used "xvidtune -show" to grab the modeline it was using, copied that to my 
Xorg.conf, and haven't looked back. 

If anyone is looking for a known-good card to make a good MythTV HD setup, you 
will not go wrong here.

-- 
Stephen Shelton
stephen at stephenashelton.com
http://www.stephenashelton.com/