Powerstrip and move from ATI to Nvidia

markhudds2

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Quickie question.

Thinking of a HTPC rebuild which will include a move from ATI (9800 Pro) to Nvidia (prob 6600GT).

I use Powerstrip to get a 1366x768@56hz resolution for my displays - this works fine on the ATI card and Catalyst drivers.

Question is, do the Nvidia cards and drivers accept this resolution? Is there still a problem accepting resolutions not divisible by 8 i.e. would it have to be 1360 or 1368? If not, I might have to keep the trusty 9800!

Cheers.
 
I don't know what you are connecting to but my advice would be to stay with he 9800 or consider an x800 series.

It took me between 6 to 8 weeks to get my 9800pro working pixel perfect with my Sony HS20 and then I upgraded to an nVidia 6800. ps just doesn't like it!

My PC says I'm running 1366x768 and ps says I am, but my HS20 sure as hell isn't! I couldn't bear the thought of wasting more hours on the proj (nearly a hundred last time!) so I've settled for a standard HDTV res of 1280x720. It's 1:1 pixel mapped with a smaller image than usual.

I'm sure there'll be all the 9600GT fans along to condemn me but that's my 2p worth!

Dave
 
I believe NVidia still has a not-by-8 problem. If you're happy with the image you're getting then IMX the difference between ATI and NVidia cards is negligible. Sure, people quote 'PureVideo' and other 'nifty' features of the NVidia, in practice I never saw anything major when I compared my 9700 to a 6800GT on my H77 on to a 92" screen. I also found the ATI easier to get stable with 50/60Hz operation, the NVidia was a Royal PITA to get reliable, though others of course have no problems.

Bottom line: I kept my 9700 and never once considered I was experiencing a sub-optimal PQ. :D

Just to show I'm not an ATI fanboy, my main and games PCs use 6600GTs (since one is SLI-ready for TES:Oblivion ;) ), which no doubt are little/no better than their ATI counterparts. :)
 
I thought that the 6800 Pure Video was 'broken' on those cards? No WMV acceleration?
 
Many thanks for the responses guys ... sounds like keeping the 9800 Pro is looking likely. I'm using Theatertek with ffdshow so I wouldn't be getting the best out of the nvidia card anyway.

The reason why I was thinking of changing is that all the latest AMD motherboards (socket 939) are PCI-Express only! To keep my 9800 Pro I need an AGP slot. Might have to go with an older socket 754 board with AGP. I'm not into games, so I don't think I'd be losing out.

In terms of ffdshow processing (increasing my resize etc), would I see a big difference between my current Athlon XP+ 2400 and, say an Athlon 64 3400+ ? Currently I can only do a 1.5x resize and unsharp mask - takes 90% cpu! Adding dscaler sharpen into the mix is a no-go! What would you recommend as a good middle-ground cpu which would allow me to do a nice 2x resize in ffdshow + dscaler sharpen?

Cheers
 
Brakeinup said:
I thought that the 6800 Pure Video was 'broken' on those cards? No WMV acceleration?
Yes, WMV accleration is broken but if an HTPC hasn't the spare CPU cycles to be able to handle a software-only decoding then it has problems which throwing a hardware decoder at probably won't overcome.

As for lack of PureVideo, again true, however my own experience is that the improvement in PQ over a non-PV system is marginal and will pale into insginifcance if the card can't output native mode (ie. the display's scaler will destroy the increased PQ PV may give).
 
MarkHudds said:
Many thanks for the responses guys ... sounds like keeping the 9800 Pro is looking likely. I'm using Theatertek with ffdshow so I wouldn't be getting the best out of the nvidia card anyway.
I 'm not sure that's true. :)

I'm don't know it PureVideo works in software mode, but my previous comment indicates my view as to its' benefit. ;)

MarkHudds said:
In terms of ffdshow processing (increasing my resize etc), would I see a big difference between my current Athlon XP+ 2400 and, say an Athlon 64 3400+ ? Currently I can only do a 1.5x resize and unsharp mask - takes 90% cpu! Adding dscaler sharpen into the mix is a no-go! What would you recommend as a good middle-ground cpu which would allow me to do a nice 2x resize in ffdshow + dscaler sharpen?

To give you some idea of processor loading, I use a 3G P4 and with this I scale to 1920x1080 (before outputting at 1280x720) using Lanczos 2, with 1.0 Chroma Sharpening .. this typically runs at about 70% CPU. I briefly dabbled with the DScaler sharpener but preferred ther sharpening does in the scaler so cant' say what CPU loading that will add.
 

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