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Spec me a HDMI 1.3 Graphics Card

Kingy

Kingy

Kingy

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
Leicester
Hi,

I'd like to play videos from my PC on my TV, so I need a graphics card that can display an image on the monitor, and also play a video on my TV via HDMI at the same time. Preferably I'd like it to be HDMI 1.3 compliant so that I only need to run one cable between PC and TV. Silent/quiet would be good, but 3D performance isn't that important unless I get a big difference for £20 or so.

What cards / chipsets can do this, and are supplied with the required dongle, either at OcUK or on the MM.

Are there any that need to be avoided / use system memory / hypermemory?

Any help appeciated. :)
 
You can get a DVI to HDMI lead and use any old DVI card, you only need HDMI v1.3 (with HDCP) if you're planning on watching BlueRay and other protected content.

If you want to get a new card, a lot of 9600GTs have built in HDMI, or if you want a cheapo solution, get something like a ATI HD3450 with a HDMI dongle that also passes through digital audio.
 
You're only going to need one cable anyhow.

It doesn't matter what version of HDMI the graphics card has as all of them supports 1920x1080p with a single cable.

HDMI 1.3 does increase this to 2560x1600, but as no TV supports that yet thats a mute point. It also supports sound which a gfx card won't be generating and finally it adds support for higher colours which needs to be supported by the GFX card also

So all in all afaik any HDMI card should do the job just fine.
 
Stonedofmoo said:
You're only going to need one cable anyhow.

It doesn't matter what version of HDMI the graphics card has as all of them supports 1920x1080p with a single cable.

So all in all afaik any HDMI card should do the job just fine.
Click to expand...

I need 2 cables. 1 for picture and 1 for sound. See spec below. So i dont believe this to be true for NVIDIA cards, although I do believe it to be true for ATI cards.
 
I thought that HDMI 1.3 was the one that allowed sound to be carried over the same cable?

To be clear, I want a HDMI capable card, that carries the sound over the HDMI cable. I did do a little research a while back, but got totally lost between which cards were Hypermemory, and I even found people saying that with certain card the monitor wouldn't display an image when it was using the TV at the same time...

Also, I'm only running XP, is this going to be ok for outputting the sound over HDMI?

Does the 3450 do all this?
 
ovia said:
I need 2 cables. 1 for picture and 1 for sound. See spec below. So i dont believe this to be true for NVIDIA cards, although I do believe it to be true for ATI cards.
Click to expand...


Hmm, I might be wrong about this. I was under the impression graphics couldn't carry sound although nosing about the ATI information sites it seems the latest Radeon's can

Curious, does this only apply to movies you are watching/the gfx card is decoding or all sounds from the PC...
 
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The HD3450 does carry sound over the HDMI, but you need the ATI HDMI dongle - most packages dont include this, but you can buy them for about a tenner.

The 9600GT with HDMI, it has a 2 pin connector on the board itself, you can re-route spdif from your audio into this, to then have the HDMI with audio.
 
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HDMI of all specs allows sound and picture. 1.3 increases the bandwidth of what can be transmitted allowing the better sound options to be carried.

I don't think any of the cards are 1.3, most of the onboards are only 1.2 but this is sufficent. If you are serious enough about sound and picture to be needing a 1.3 compliant system you wouldn't be doing this from the PC. You would have a full on surround sound home theatre.
 
Whilst I have seen no specs, I would hope the new generation ATI/NV cards offer some prgression on this matter. ATI do seem to be a bit ahead of NV in bringing HDMI forward but surely there is an easy way to connect the GPU to a header to give sound over HDMI.

I guess decoding may suffer then?

So many people use HD TV's now I think it would be a major selling point on the new cards.
 
mdjmcnally said:
HDMI of all specs allows sound and picture. 1.3 increases the bandwidth of what can be transmitted allowing the better sound options to be carried.

I don't think any of the cards are 1.3, most of the onboards are only 1.2 but this is sufficent. If you are serious enough about sound and picture to be needing a 1.3 compliant system you wouldn't be doing this from the PC. You would have a full on surround sound home theatre.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but I think the main issue so far is getting a set up that only requires a single HDMI (no dongles or separate optical) cable for ease of use. Not that its much hassle right now, it could just be easier.
 
There are a few motherboards that offer all that, the AMD 780G has a HDMI HD3400 with audio, its about perfect if you're building a media center from scratch. A couple of new Intel ones offer the same too I think.
 
Lanz said:
There are a few motherboards that offer all that, the AMD 780G has a HDMI HD3400 with audio, its about perfect if you're building a media center from scratch. A couple of new Intel ones offer the same too I think.
Click to expand...

True, but with so many people gaming now on HDTV's there is a real need for GPU's that offer a gaming and video solution.
 
You guys are getting a little knotted up here. Pretty much all of the 3800 series ATi cards offer 5.1ch audio over hdmi. It is correct that you need the ATi supplied dvi-hdmi dongle and there were a few driver issues. As far as I know these have now been sorted out and you should be able to get both 1080p video and 5.1ch audio to your HDTV with 1 cable :)

Lots of options:

3870x2: - card of choice for gamers!
3870XT - good half way house.
All the way down to the 3850pro (256mb) Bargain basement - not sure how good the decoding is though - not an issue if you have a C2D!

All offer what you need - but make sure you get the dongle! OcUK were very kind to me and sent me one for free - Kudos.
Personally I think it's false advertising to claim 5.1ch and not supply the dongle as it's proprietary hardware and ATi will not sell it to you separately - hence technically not possible - but hey...
 
cavemanoc said:
You guys are getting a little knotted up here. Pretty much all of the 3800 series ATi cards offer 5.1ch audio over hdmi. It is correct that you need the ATi supplied dvi-hdmi dongle and there were a few driver issues. As far as I know these have now been sorted out and you should be able to get both 1080p video and 5.1ch audio to your HDTV with 1 cable :)

Lots of options:

3870x2: - card of choice for gamers!
3870XT - good half way house.
All the way down to the 3850pro (256mb) Bargain basement - not sure how good the decoding is though - not an issue if you have a C2D!
Click to expand...

I've got a C2D E4300 @ stock...

I take it that these cards all have their own memory (ie not hypermemory)?

Do the 2600/3400/3600 have their own memory?

I'm not massively fussed about surround sound as my tv doesn't have a built-in amp/decoder/whatever...

How power hungry is the 3800 series? Are they noisy?
 
The 3xxx series are considerably quieter/less power hungry than the 2xxx series. PowerColor have what looks like a very quiet cooler on them - but you could always get one of the aftermarket ones if you really wanted to silence it.

Just depends what you want to use it for and how silent you need it. The 34xx series even come with passive heatsinks for total silence, but obviously they're no use for gaming (and now all claim audio over hdmi - though romour has it that all 3xxx cards are capable.)

And yes, they all have dedicated onboard memory.

EDIT: I can't in good conscience recommend these without warning you about the problems I had with the 2xxx series. I believe the problems have been sorted out in the new cards and drivers, but can't confirm this :(
 
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