Spec me a PCI (yes, PCI) graphics card

[TheMagicPirate]

I have gotten my hands on a free Dell Optiplex GX520 that I am trying to set up as a media centre of sorts.

The machine currently struggles on 1080p movies so I'm looking at getting a graphics card to help it along.
(Current spec, P4 2.8Ghz*, 1.5gb Ram, onboard 8mb(!!) graphics)
*with Hyper-threading, oh yes!

I'm looking for a cheap graphics card, but it must be low profile and ideally, passively cooled.

An "nVidia e-GeForce 8400 GS" can be had for £25. According to the write-up on google shopping it is (or was) the first "video processor able to offload 100% of Blu-ray and HD DVD H.264 video decoding from the CPU". Sounds perfect?

Overclockers have a GeForce N210 for £5 more.
This has double the memory and almost double the clock speed, but its not a passively cooled card which is a downside for a media centre.

I've heard that ATI cards are better at movie playback? Is there any truth is this?

I've not looked at PC components for many years (I went Mac and didn't look back.... much) so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Nymins]

Quick look and found a 5450 LP PCI:

http://www.vtx3d.com/products_features.asp?id=90

I use a low profile Radeon 4350, but its PCI-E and it works pretty well. I'd imagine the PCI version, or versions similar, would provide a decent experience.

 

[Asomodai]

I too was looking for something similar to run 1080P, however the PCI bus itself cannot shift enough MB a second to actually allow the graphics card to render 1080P video effectively enough. I gave up on the idea eventually.

 

[alex24]

My advice is to re-think the build, I don't think that a PCI GPU is going to be much good. That machine was only ever designed to be an office workhorse really. Perhaps you could sell it (it's still worth something if it's functioning) and then pick up something like a WD TV second hand?

My old boss would say 'stop polishing the turd'. I don't mean to be rude or anything, just my advice would be to go about it with a different machine rather than spending money on that one.

 

[TheMagicPirate]

I too was looking for something similar to run 1080P, however the PCI bus itself cannot shift enough MB a second to actually allow the graphics card to render 1080P video effectively enough. I gave up on the idea eventually.

Really? I was under the impression that PCI could shift over 100MB per second? (although I dont claim that the impression is correct )

My advice is to re-think the build, I don't think that a PCI GPU is going to be much good. That machine was only ever designed to be an office workhorse really. Perhaps you could sell it (it's still worth something if it's functioning) and then pick up something like a WD TV second hand?

My old boss would say 'stop polishing the turd'. I don't mean to be rude or anything, just my advice would be to go about it with a different machine rather than spending money on that one.

I did consider that because I do agree with you and the 'stop polishing a turd' comment. However I had wanted to use the PC side of the system from time to time (torrents, music, connecting iphone etc...)

EDIT: It seems that 1080p decoding requires 207MB of throughput.

Looks like this project is doomed, dooomed, doooooooooooomed

 

[Rroff]

Depends on the system if its relatively recent as far as PCI goes it should have enough bus bandwidth but older standards won't be able to sustain high enough bandwidth for smooth 1080P playback (theres a difference between the numbers on paper and what would actually be available sustained in a working system with other stuff sharing the bus, etc.).

 

[krooton]

PCI 2.3 with a 64-bit bus should be fine for 1080p.