Another Video Card Discussion

[Eaglesfan27]

I've narrowed my choices down to a few cards, and I'm interested in comments from people. I'm leaning towards teh Radeon All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro Video Card. Anyone have it? Any problems with it? How easy is it to hook up to a TV, particularly for recording shows off of the TV? I often find shows on TV that have material I can use for lectures and such and want to be able to put it on my computer fairly easily.

My other two top choices are the ATI Radeon 9600 XT and the GeForce 9700. From the specs, it appears they would have slightly better performance but not meet my TV criteria. However, I'm still now sure how easy the All-in-Wonder is to setup. Finally, I'm also considering the All-in-Wonder 9800, but have to research further if it will run with my internal power supply only being 235 watts.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Airhog]

all video cards are going to put a strain on that power supply. You can probably upgrade it pretty cheeply to a 350W supply for 25 bucks.

I personally prefer the Nvidia chipsets, but that is only because they have much better driver support.

[Eaglesfan27]

How hard is it to install the upgrade for an internal power supply upgrade?

[HornedFrog Purple]

Pretty easy. Most of them you just unscrew the screws in the back of the case, disconnect the ribbons and wires to the devices and yank it out.

When you put a new one in, if your computer is relatively new it is pretty much idiotproof to reconnect everything since it will only fit in one way (including to the motherboard).

I have a Radeon myself and over the last year to year and a half, ATI has tremendously improved their driver support. Either one you won't go wrong.

[Eaglesfan27]

Looking on the internet, I see several different sizes of power supplies. Some of them look fairly large from the picture. I assume all power supplies are internal to go into the case. Is it possible my computer/case may not support some of the power supplies? Are there external power supplies and do they work in a reliable fashion?

Again, I have a Pentium 4 1.8 GHZ compaq presario 6024 (which I'm surprised came with such a small power supply.)

[HornedFrog Purple]

Yes some of them won't fit. Some power supplies are bigger than others.

You could do one of two things. Take yours out, measure it then check the specs over the internet on the ones you are interested in. The other is take yours out, go to a nearby shop or store and get yours physically matched up with the one you are interested in. Really if you can go to a local store you would be just as good as ordering one because of the shipping cost.

If possible I would suggest getting one with an additional fan on the base of the unit. I don't know if that will be an option for yours though but take a look.

[Eaglesfan27]

Well, I opened my computer up and am ashamed to admit that I became intimidated by all of the cords to and from the power supply. I know it is simple to replace, but I decided I wasn't going to do it today. However, I did get the ATI All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro and am very happy with it's performance. Despite my power supply, it appears to be running very nicely and is a HUGE upgrade from my GeForce 2MX that was in the computer before. Also, the video capture is working flawlessly :) Now, I just need to go out tomorrow and buy a longer S-Video cable so I can have output to my TV as my computer and TV aren't RIGHT next to each other and the darn card only came with a 4 foot cable. Once I do that I should have TIVO like playback on my TV :D

Edited to add: I also didn't buy the power supply because I want the best upgrade possible, and I spent all of the alotted Christmas money on the card. However, my birthday is 10 days away and I plan on getting the power supply then :)

[Airhog]

If you can plug in a video card, then you should be able to swap power supplies. I would do like some others reccomended and just take your powersupply down to the local shop, and pick one up that matches.

[Capital]

My GeForce 4 Ti4200 died a few days ago, after only a year of use. I bought the ATI Radeon 9600 SE. So far, I'm please with the performance. I didn't want to buy top of the line (the price tag is just too much), but didn't seem like the slight ance increase of the 9600XT vs the SE was worth the price difference ($129 vs $179). Just my 2 cents...

[Eaglesfan27]

Yeah, I will remove and replace the power supply after my Birthday on the 4th :) I'm also considering a DVD-R drive at the same time. If I get that, I will need the power supply I'm sure. The only problem with my video card so far is that for some reason I can't get the computer to display output on both the monitor and the TV at the same time. I can get input from cable on both of them including different channels, but if I enable output for one it deactivates output for the other. Anyone have any suggestions?

[Eaglesfan27]

Dola - I love being able to get TV reception on my computer with this new video card. I'm watching the Eagle's game in the corner of my screen as I type this. I can play FOF2004 as I watch the game as well. Of course, if my wife didn't insist on the setup in the living room as she wanted it, then I would be able to easily see the TV while being on the computer. However as Skydog and others have pointed out, my wife is SWMBO ;)

[Easy Mac]

How is it at TV recording? I've been thinking about picking up either an ATI AIW or just a separate card for video recording alone... The good stand alone cards are cheaper than a good VCR, and better gameplaying is always a plus

[Eaglesfan27]

I've played around with it some, and if I hook it up to my 120 Gigabyte external drive then I have well over 40 hours of good quality recording. If I adjust the quality to extended play, then I can have well over 80 hours (close to 120 from what I remember on the lower quality settings) but I find the quality a little below what I want for my shows. I think defragging the drive you are going to record on is very important as well. Before I defragged the drive the computer told me 1% of the frames were being dropped. Afterwards, it was <1% of the frames being dropped and I couldn't detect any problems with the naked eye.

[Eaglesfan27]

Dola - I had used about 30 GB of the hard drive backing up critical data. Therefore, that 40 plus hours of quality recording available is actually on about 80GB of space :)