Onboard video (1 Viewer)

[sirdandric]

Thinking about using onboard video for my htpc build. Which chipset would you recommend (not very familiar in all these things):

- NVIDIA GeForce 6150
- ATI Radeon XPRESS 200

Thanks for advice!
(and if you have mainboard advice (mATX), then it's also welcome)

 

[NorthernJohn]

I'm using onboard ATI Radeon Xpress 200 with mixed results.

Everything is working perfectly apart from DVD playback. I get the odd dropped frame causing a bit of stuttering. Drives me mad. :evil: It could possibly be fixed with more tweaking but I've tried every combination of codecs and navigators with varying results and have frankly lost the will to live with it.

Poking around these forums it does appear that nvidia produces better results so because of my problems, I'm contemplating upgrading from onboard graphics to a nvidia card of somesort.

So if I was to go for onboard graphics again, I would try the nvidia.

Your mileage may vary. Good Luck

 

[Tech Geek]

I've built 4 systems based on the ATi 200 chipset, 1 based on the 6100 chipset and 1 system based on the older ATi chipset.
I haven't seen any problems with any of them. Even the older ATi chipset works fine with MediaPortal and DVD playback. I haven't installed a new version on that machine yet but it shouldn't be a problem since it's already set for VMR9 Renderless.

If you are having playback issues make sure your bios settings are ok and make sure you are using codecs that actually support your chipset. Make sure Windows Media Video Accelleration is enabled in the drivers. Make sure all hardware accelleration is turned on in MediaPortal.

 

[Tech Geek]

BTW, one of the latest ATi driver releases had some sort of issue with registering or cleaning off dll files. That could also cause playback issues.

 

[NorthernJohn]

Thanks for the suggestions Tech Geek. I'll have a play around before I open my wallet.

 

[Tech Geek]

Thanks for the suggestions Tech Geek. I'll have a play around before I open my wallet.

Shouldn't need to open the wallet at all. The codecs should be freely available and were probably included on an install CD that came with your board. If a DVD player came with it you might find it on there. Actually, the drivers may include it as well. When you configure the codecs to use for playback you should see "(ATi)" in the name.
If you are using anything else for video you may have poor results.

 

[sirdandric]

Now has anyone any idea which i could better use? NVIDIA GeForce 6150 or ATI Radeon XPRESS 200? Any experiences? Since i've read good things about both.

 

[NorthernJohn]

Thanks for the suggestions Tech Geek. I'll have a play around before I open my wallet.

Shouldn't need to open the wallet at all. The codecs should be freely available and were probably included on an install CD that came with your board. If a DVD player came with it you might find it on there. Actually, the drivers may include it as well. When you configure the codecs to use for playback you should see "(ATi)" in the name.
If you are using anything else for video you may have poor results.

Sorry to hijack your thread sirandric

Tech Geek... I see on the ati web site that new drivers were released earlier this month. I'll get them installed. I didn't get a software dvd player on the mboard disc therefore don't have any ATi dvd codecs available. But I have noticed there are some on the ATi support site. Are you suggesting I install these and configure MP to use them? Seems reasonable enough and I'll give it a go. Last night I enabled Windows Media Video Acceleration but haven't had a chance to test it out.

BTW: I only suffer problems when viewing DVD through MP. PowerDVD doesn't give me any issues. But using PowerDVD reduces the WAF immensley :roll:

:arrow: When I mentioned 'opening wallet' I was referring to buying a new graphics card rather than using the onboard. If I can get the onboard working as desired then I can spend my money on other things.

 

[rtv]

If USB-Bandwith isn't relevant for you I can recommend the MSI RS 48x - I'm not having chipset related issues at all - tv out quality is superb and the RS482 will have additional YUV adapters to hook up the display device..

 

[sirdandric]

USB-bandwidth is not important to me..
And the RS482 uses the ATI Radeon Express, right?

Hmmm, was already thinking about MSI, since i also heared a lot of good things about the MSI K8NGM2-FID (with the GeForce 6150)..

So still the question which is better (if one is better), or is the one better in some things and the other in other things? Anyone knows any (dis)advantages about one of these chipsets/onboard graphics?