Should I get one of these NVIDIA HDMI cards to output to my 42" HDTV?

[alexjholland]

Hey,

I have a pentium 4 PC with a 7600GT and 2 gig of DDR2 RAM - plus upgraded fans etc.

It works really nicely for my role of a media centre PC, but might deserve upgrading for a new HDTV - to replace my CRT - and join my 5.1 surround sound kit.

Currently I use an optical cable from my Sound Blaster Audigy 2Zs Platinum into the 5.1 kit and an S-Video cable from the 7600GT into the CRT - which works suprisingly nicely for movies.

The natural conclusion would be to use the same optical-5.1 arrangement, but stick in a VGA cable to the HDTV - which I'm sure would perform decently.

However the neatness of an HDMI graphics card which would transmit both sound and picture - then running one optical cable from the TV into the 5.1 kit is very appealling.

(Particularly as I could scrap the optical splitter box currently sitting before my 5.1 kit's input, as both the XBox and PC would run into the tv via HDMI then one optical cable out)

How well would this option work?

- Will the picture from the PC be better than VGA?
- Will the HDMI cable output full 5.1 from my PC?
- Will it provide good sound quality compared to my SBlaster/optical?
- Will it use my SoundBlaster 2Zs Platinum - or will it be basic motherboard sound?
- Are there any delays in the sound?
- Any other considerations?

The new TV is a 720p Panasonic 42" X10

The 5.1 kit is a Sony DAV-D150G which supports Dolby and DTS

I don't think there is much sense in getting a graphics card significantly more powerful than my 7600GT - as the processor is single core, the case isn't huge, the power supply is 350W and I only play Battlefield 2 on it.

I am looking at one of these perhaps? I much prefer NVIDIA's interface - but would tolerate ATI if they really were superior for this role.

PCI-Express of course!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=56&subid=1576

 

[alexjholland]

The first post on AV Forums on a similar discussion asserts that the X10 optical output only does stereo.

So the real question now, seems to be - 'Is the picture quality from one of those NVIDIA graphics card's HDMI outputs going to be significantly, or even noticeably superior, to my 7600GT's VGA output?'

I use my PC-TV output mainly for movies - plus a little internet browsing.

 

[Teki187]

I just use a DVI > HDMI cable.

Then plug the sound into the 2.1 system my tv is plugged into.

Shimples.

 

[buttkinz]

+1 above, thats the way i used to do it on the my old 3870

 

[Alexrose1uk]

I'd consider looking into ATI options, as their support for HDMI audio, and HDTV in general, is better than Nvidia's in my opinion, although preferably if you can find a 4 series card that'll fit your machine as they improved the audio support further.

One thing I would check is what exactly the optical on your TV can output via optical. Many will not output more than 2 channel.

How much better the picture would be would depend on how your TV handles the inputs!

 

[kieves1]

Maybe a ATI 5770.Quite efficent power wise has plenty of grunt for games and is DX11 which may be of benefit to you later on also has plenty of display connectors 2 Dual-Link DVI-I, 1 HDMI & 1 DisplayPort.

Good luck

 

[Durzel]

From memory only certain NVIDIA cards support HDMI audio, they usually have a 2 or 3 pin connector on them which you connect to the motherboard SPDIF port. Zotac cards for example have this.

I got a Zotac 8800GT with the intention of doing sound through HDMI but then figured it would be better to leave it seperate in case I wanted the sound output to go to hifi seperates or something.

 

[alexjholland]

I use the DVI on my 7600GT for my lovely ASUS V226H 22' 1080p monitor, so only have VGA available on this graphics card.

The link I used on my first post shows the NVIDIA Graphics Plus GT 240 series, all of which seem to show HDMI output.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=56&subid=1576

It was a 210 in PC World I picked up yesterday that promised HDMI sound output as well. Shame it was overpriced.

I'm still confused as to whether it would be comparable sound quality to my SoundBlaster soundcard, or whether it would take advantage.

ATI certainly seem to be more HDTV orientated - this seems a no-brainer to me. I have one ATI card in a laptop and I really don't care for its software - but am open to their desktop cards.

According to AV Forums, it doesn't seem like the optical supports 5.1...