>>> "Brian McEntire" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 09/16/05 4:18 PM >>> > Okay - I started this thread, hope it's okay if I chime back in :) > > I was just about to order the parts, but I came across a couple of > stumbling blocks: > > I'm generally seeing recommendations for the FX5200 Nvidia cards > for their onboard MPEG2 decoding ... makes them a good candidate > for HDTV out, and that's what I'm building this for. NOW, the hard > part... should I get an AGP 4x/8x version or a regular PCI version? > I can't seem to find a PCI Express version. If I got with AGP, it > limit's my motherboard options to older chipsets, like the Intel > 865PE. If I went with a PCI card, I could get the Intel 925XP > or another newer chipset. So, the question is... what's more > important -- the AGP bus bandwitdth or the possibility for a newer > chipset to take better advantage of a 3.4 GHz CPU?
You seem to be restricting yourself to Intel mobos. If you look at the last few posts about HD, it seems like raw cpu processing is a higher priority than the video card. You might want to consider AMD as well. Anyway, you could always get the PCI-Express version of another, more capable card. The 6800 comes in pci express...and here's one that I'm probably going to buy for my gaming machine... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127179 Granted, it's got a fan on it, but I don't care about that when I'm playing bf2. Once the bf2 novelty wears off, I may get some sort of silent kit for it and put it in a yet-to-be built HDTV machine. This one might be an option if you want to go straight out of the gate with no fan... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814125185 Then again, in one picture it shows a fan rather than heat pipes. Ugh - call to Newegg to be sure. > The other question is, what's a good audio card with SPDIF > optical out? I'd prefer one that sounds good and is well supported > to one that may be great but not widely used. Right now I'm > looking at the: > *AOpen Cobra AW870LP 8 (7.1) Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI > > *If a Soundblaster Audigy is a better choice, can someone help me > with which model? There seem to be hundreds of them (okay, slight > over statement :) Yeah, there are a lot of them. That Aopen one is good enough. I have the Audigy2 ZS SB0350: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102178 and will be setting up a new slave be/fe this weekend. I'll be using the spdif output, and it works fine in a frontend machine. Paul
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