I'm in the later stages of planning a significant upgrade to my FE machine. I use OTA ATSC tuners, mostly 1080i channels (cbs,nbc). My current FE (a P3-1400, yes a P3 can do HD) is marginally powered and is forced to use XvMC at 720p. This leaves a lot of motion interlacing artifacts (blocky edges) in the video.
My TV is a CRT RP 51" Hitachi, and it will accept component or HDMI inputs. I currently us a NV 5600 and component converter to drive the tv. The new machine I'm planning should have plenty of CPU power, probably a AMD X2 (3800-4800) so I'll be turning off XvMC. Probably overkill cpu-wise, but boxes in my house have a way of migrating to other uses like desktops/game machines. The new MB will most likely be PCI-e. I'd probably pick a 6200, maybe 6600 except I see a lot of them have digital max resolutions of 1600x1200. Ideally, I'd like a card that will allow me to use the Audio Authority converter, or the cards HDTV output, or digital DVI/HDMI outputs for 1080i; maybe someday even 1080p (new TV?). I'd like the flexibility to try different output solutions to see which I like best for quality / features. The machine will run 95% of the time as a myth FE, and about 3 weeks a year gaming. I "might" even pick 2 cards, one for TV and one for gaming if the gaming card was too noisy or power hungry and/or the tv card too under powered for gaming. Fan noise is important for myth as it will be in my living room. What are some of the best solutions people have found that take all/most of these issues into account? Thanks, Brian
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