[mythtv-users] minimum card requirements for VDPAU

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Wed Mar 11 20:08:43 UTC 2009


sonofzev at iinet.net.au wrote:
> Hi All 
> 
> I have read various bits of information for VDPAU drivers and am getting
> confused, so hopefully this list can help me. 
> 
> I am buying a new system for my audio studio soon, and due to a rotation on my
> boxes  will need to buy a new PCIe video card. At this point in time I am trying
> to spend as little money as possible, but don't want to be caught in a false
> economy and find in 12 months I should have spent more now. 
> 
> I am wondering essentially if a base model silent 8400 GS card will be enough for
> my mythfrontend to run VDPAU. The CPU is an opteron 170 and it has 2GB of RAM.
> 
> I use the system for watching HD rips, DVD's and Digital TV. 
> 
> I have read there are some limitations to any 8xxx series cards, but I am
> confused as to what these are and if I need to worry about them. Locally I can't
> get anything lower than a 9600 in a silent model, and that seems like overkill
> for my needs. 
> 
> Any clarification would be nice.  

If you are going to spend a little money, you might want to consider 
getting a motherboard with a builtin Nvidia graphics chipset, such as 
the Asus P5N7A-VM. This has a 9300GS chip with a large number of 
decoders and it does VDPAU very nicely with a Core2Duo CPU.

A stock Intel CPU cooler is quite quiet, so this board is very silent in 
my office. Lots of USB ports and SATA ports. I use a PCI IDE card for 
extra IDE harddrives.

Getting a new motherboard was about $30 Cdn more than just getting an 
Nvidia card. I could have re-used the Pentium 4 chip on the old MB, but 
decided to step up, so a new CPU and new (4G) memory was about $200 more. A

And the output on the Dell 24" 1920x1200 display is VERY nice. I found a 
number of good reviews just by googling the name. SilentPC review gave 
it a glowing review, as it is low power and powerful at the same time.

Geoff






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