Htpc

[Cabal]

I am thinking of building a HTPC and was wondering what video card people recommend?

Any other helpful info would be appreciated.

[ktulu]

I'm just unsing an old MX400 (Gainward GS) in mine, plus a leadtek 2000XP deluxe TV card... does the job fine (remembering that I'm only running my TV at 800 x 600).

[Agent666]

yeah all you really need is something with TV out.....
unless you got a HDTV which I doubt then PAL resolution is 720 x 576 so anything over that is really useless... and most cards these days output up to 1024 x 768 and even a GF2 will do up to 800 x 600 so you really dont need to spend lots to get the job done...
Other things you may want to look for is some type of hardware acceleration for DVD... especially if it is a low powered box...

[Gremlin]

I'm using an ole Geforce DDR256 works great iirc its an ASUS6800 Deluxe has Capture and TV out, also have a Pinnacle Capture card so I can do things like Picture in Picture on mine, TVtool is great to use with the Geforce based cards, you'll find some more good info about cards and which chipset to look out for on their website too

http://tvtool.info/index_e.htm

[ktulu]

Originally posted by Agent666
especially if it is a low powered box...

yep... RAMs good as well. Running an XP1600+ and win2k, I definetly noticed the difference when I dropped from 512Mb to 256Mb of RAM (DVD's skip once or twice a movie now), but I needed it more in my gaming rig with the new games :D