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J. Clarke · April 19th 06, 09:44 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia

wrote:

My idea is to make one final upgrade to my Athlon64 3000+ 1 GB RAM AGP
system. I'll install a new 7800 GS video card on my aging rig. In
about a year or so, when the 7800 GS becomes obsolete, I can still
"retire" this system to work as an HTPC. Or at least, that's my
justification for spending $300 on an aging AGP system on its way down
the drain. So I'm curious about using the Nvidia 7800 series as an
HTPC.

Gross overkill.

I'm also interested in knowing how well the 7800 card would perform in
outputting an upscaled video to the TV screen. In the past, I've used
a ATI 9800 Pro to attempt upscaling a 720x480 DVD movie into higher
resolutions with all the bells and whistles (noise reduction, etc).
The framerates slowed to a craaaawl.

I presume you have an HDTV and are using DVI or component inputs. Otherwise
upscaling video is pointless--a non-HD tv can't display anything beyond the
standard DVD signal.

What software are you using for "upscaling"? There is software that used
the video board's processor to accelerate the process (assuming that the
board has the necessary hardware) but the 9800 is well equipped in this
regard. That software generally doesn't do noise reduction and the like,
so I would guess that you're using ffdshow or dscaler or the like, and
those do not use the video board's accelerator hardware so they are limited
by the CPU.

I've always suspected that this
was largely a CPU bottleneck issue, not a video card issue. Would the
7800 GS video card improve performance in this area at all? And how
well would that video card be able to record TV programs in HDTV
format?

Video cards don't record anything. You need an HD tuner for recording HDTV.
For the US market the Dvico Fusion boards are well regarded. For other
markets you'd need something designed for your local video standards.

There are also three flavors of the 7800 GS available: the vanilla 7800
GS, the 7800 OC, and the 7800 OC Superclock. Obviously, the Superclock
would yield the best game performance of the three. But would the
extra heat and supersized fan be a problem later on?

Most people want their HTPCs to be as quiet as possible.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)