New GFX for Gaming and HD Movies

[Panneskjegg]

Greetings!

I have used (and still do) a Panasonic PX70 50" Plasma TV as my computer screen for around 1.5 years now. It is connected to my PC with a VGA cable. I've been really happy with it, since I have mostly just used it to play games and surf the web.

Lately, however - I have gotten my 'eyes' up for HD movies and TV shows on my PC. So I bought a DVI-HDMI cable to see if there was any improvement in PQ - and there was.. The colors are so much better using a HDMI cable. I mean, it's pretty much a 'day/night' difference. I got a problem though - when using HDMI cable @ 1280x720 - I can't adjust it to fit the screen. Not possible to adjust on my TV - and not possible to adjust on my PC. When I use the nVidia control panel trying to fit the 'screen' - it just ends up giving me a retarded resolution and it looks like crap.

Several of my friends have bought some cheap multimedia PCs that has Windows Vista and HDMI out on the PC. So I thought it might be easier to fit the screen through Vista... - So I installed Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, 64bit version... But I had a different problem here - no drivers worked on my GFX card (I tried 10 different GFX drivers from nVidia) -- everytime I was messing with the GFX settings (Changing resolution or whatever) - the screen would just 'crash' (by that I mean the entire screen got gray and I had to restart PC).

So im thinking; Will a new GFX Card (and maybe Windows Vista) fix this problem? If so. What ATI card would you recommend for around 100-150£ ?

I also have a nice home theater system, with 7.3.. I read this about my motherboard: Supports HDMI Ready VGA card ---- Does that mean if I get a new HDMI GFX card - I will be able to watch HD movies with both HD Picture AND HD sound (DTS HD Master 7.1 and such) ?

Thanks for your time!

 

[Badbonji]

If you can get a HD4870. However, graphics cards don't output sound (as you may have guessed) so you cannot get sound through the HDMI, only video. You need to use onboard or through a sound card for sound. I am not sure why your 7950gt is not working correctly in vista, as it isn't dx10...

 

[m_k]

You can get sound off the 4870 through hdmi. I believe the 2900xt and up are capable of audio. It's not the greatest, but it uses the realtek audio drivers. They weren't too bad when i played around with it.

 

[mattgmann]

you can indeed get audio over hdmi from most video cards. My htpc is running with an 8800gt and streaming the audio through the hdmi cable.

You'll have to read the specifications of each card to see what it's output capabilities are. All of the hd4xxx series cards from ati support the latest LCPM. I'm not sure where the decoding is done though, and it may rely on what the onboard audio of your motherboard outputs via SPDIF. The only sure way to go is to get a good audio card that supports all of the audio formats that your receiver does.

An ati 4830 would be a good affordable upgrade for you if you plan on playing games. But a 4850 or 4870 would be even better if you're willing to pay a little more. For just HD movie decoding, a 4350 would be enough.

 

[Dan0512]

If you're not willing to spend too much money, I think a HD4830 should get the job done.

dan

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

If you can get a HD4870. However, graphics cards don't output sound (as you may have guessed) so you cannot get sound through the HDMI, only video. You need to use onboard or through a sound card for sound. I am not sure why your 7950gt is not working correctly in vista, as it isn't dx10...

as said, ATi newer cards all do sound over HDMI out via a special DVi cable ATi includes with the cards.

NVIDIA apparently has some cards that can do it as well.