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ssl6

Member

From: Ottawa, ON, CA

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 594

cheap graphics card for a media center PC

so i traded some hardware teh other day, and got an asus m2n68 board that i started building a media center pc with. now my idea was to use xbmc and mythtv. now as it turns out, mythtv is a little more involved to setup than i expected, i haven't even managed to get my tv tuner working yet, so thats one issue

the other thing, the main thing anyhow, is it turns out the xbmc performance is terrible with the nouveau driver, so i'm thinking about getting a cheap radeon 4350 since as far as i know, they'll do audio over hdmi so i can run a single cable from the box to my tv. my question here now is if anyone has any experience with the radeonhd drivers and these cards, even maybe with xbmc? i just don't want to go out and spend the money to find out it doesn't work any better than what i had performance wise. really just want to know if the radeonhd drivers are working 100% with the 4350 or not

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flamelab

Member

From: Athens, Hellas (Greece)

Registered: 2007-12-26

Posts: 2,160

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

GT210, so that you have VDPAU on Linux, which works flawlessly.

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

If it's hardware video decoding that you want, radeons are rather a pain to get working, if you get it working at all. So I'd recommend the binary nvidia driver, which would give you VDPAU. If you have the right nvidia card that is, so what card do you have? If it's not VDPAU capable, then I'd recommend a GT 220. Not nearly powerful enough for gaming, but perfect VDPAU.

ssl6

Member

From: Ottawa, ON, CA

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 594

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

well, the board has a nvidia 7000 graphics, i just need hardware acceleration for xbmc to work proper, so my choice is to switch to the nvidia binary driver. or i was thinking of getting a radeon 4350 like i mentioned. as far as hardware decoding, i'm not worried about that, i'm not really running anything in hd. essentially, this system is going to replace my old xbox with xbmc, but now i'll have the added tv tuner capability for watching / recording tv

i was thinking the 4350 would be nice just for the audio over hdmi, right now i'm using vga into my tv and a seperate cable for audio. i just want to get xbmc running smooth, and then i can worry about setting up my tv tuner

Last edited by ssl6 (2010-08-16 14:33:55)

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ssl6

Member

From: Ottawa, ON, CA

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 594

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

maybe i'll try the nvidia blob before i go out and buy a card i guess. i think i mostly just like buying hardware....

Last edited by ssl6 (2010-08-16 18:08:05)

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ssl6

Member

From: Ottawa, ON, CA

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 594

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

so i bought the 4350 yesterday, impulse kicked in. works beautifully. now i just need to set up my tuner and the audio, automate the startup, and get a case with a remote, and it'll be good to go

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Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

If you don't need hardware video decode, the integrated Geforce 7000 should have been more than enough. Besides a standard textured video Xv backend, nouveau supports even a high quality textured video Xv backend that uses better scaling.
It's possible though that this was exactly your issue - the high quality backend is default and the integrated graphics can't handle it. Instead of buying a new card, all you would have needed to do is change the Xv port, so that the the standard Xv backend would be used.

ssl6

Member

From: Ottawa, ON, CA

Registered: 2007-08-30

Posts: 594

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

yes, absolutely, for standard playback, the integrated chipset was good. the problem was XBMC doesn't seem to work well with the nouveau driver, even trying to browse menu's was super choppy, took like 10-20 seconds everytime you press down in a menu for example to see the selection change. i could have used nvidia's binary driver, but i've been using nouveau for so long now, and it actually makes my system feel like it has a quad core which the nvidia didn't at the time, maybe nvidia's drivers have improved since then? but at the same time, i'm glad i got the radeon, the XBMC performance is great, and the HDMI hookup for the tv is convienient as well. Also using the vga input on my TV, i kept having to adjust the screen position because its constant autoscan everytime the resolution changed did not get it right, with the hdmi its lined up perfect without having to mess with it. so i think the 50$ for the card and an hdmi cable was worth it

Last edited by ssl6 (2010-08-17 15:18:34)

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Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

Hmm, I have a feeling XBMC uses OpenGL for it's gui and you were missing nouveau-dri to get hardware OpenGL.
Well, if you're happy with the radeon and had the money for it, that's all that matters.

.:B:.

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2006-11-26

Posts: 5,819

Website

Re: cheap graphics card for a media center PC

The nouveau driver is a no-go up till now if you want stable 3D support. I have an AppleTV with Arch on it, and i use the binary nvidia driver. Xbmc needs it.

As for your ATi card, apparently you can already use 3D hardware acceleration on Linux with the proprietary ATi driver through va-api (I bumped into someone who said he had it up and running, don't know what distro he used though).

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