Suggestions for Video Card (PCIe 1.0?)

[RehabMan]

I installed a new computer for some friends and they just gave me the old computer and I thought I might do some upgrades and find a use for it.  Thinking about using it for a Media Center box to drive a TV in my garage.

Here are the current specs:
Dell E521 (ugly case doesn’t matter as this is a garage)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor (socket AM2)
512MB DDR2 PC-5300 (667Mhz) memory
Integrated Nvidia 6150 LE graphics
160GB 7200 RPM hard disk (relatively slow, 45MB/s, according to CrystalDiskMark)
Integrated 10/100 ethernet

I’d like it to run Win7 and WMC reasonably to stream content from my WHS.

Here are my upgrades as planned so far:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5800+ ($50 from tigerdirect.com)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 PC-64000 (800Mhz) memory ($44 from tigerdirect.com)

I can probably make use of the integrated audio as all I need is stereo output, but I have an old SoundBlaster Audigy 2 laying around if I need it.

I know the hard disk is slow, which might make booting and waking from sleep slow, but will attack that later if I see the need.  I’m not going to use this system a lot, just a bit when messing around in the garage.

The bigger question is around video…  The system has a PCIe x16 slot, but it is only PCIe 1.0.  A bit of searching on newegg.com resulted in the following candidate:

Zotac geForce 8400 GS.  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500178

Would that be enough to play HD video with the above system?  It is half-height and passive cooling which means I could potentially find other uses for it in the future.  I’m almost certain I couldn’t use it to bitstream HD audio formats, so I’d have to find a way to down convert on the fly to stereo (ffdshow audio decoder will probably do that), as I have most of my BD/HD-DVD movie RIPs in their native format, some of which include DTS-MA and TrueHD.

There are more options if I open the search up to PCIe 2.0, but I don’t know if most 2.0 cards will work in a PCIe 1.0 slot…

Any info/suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,

// Dean

[mikinho]

For that price go I would personally go w/ an ATI 5450 ([url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102877]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102877[/url] or NVIDIA GT 210 ([url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130541]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130541[/url]).

I’ve used both cards successfully in a PCIe 1.0 slot.

[autoboy]

All PCIe 2.0 cards are compatible with PCIe 1.0 slots on motherboards.  The graphics card will simply default back to PCIe 1.0 mode and it will have no affect on anything since 16x PCIe-1.0 is plenty fast for today’s graphics cards. 

I recommend the AMD 5570 as the best video card option, but even a 5450 or 4350 would work fine if your aren’t concerned about the best image quality possible.

You might even get by with an upgrade to the Ram and the video card only since the video cards now accelerate most video, unless you’ve got a large library of improperly coded content.  The single core Athlon is still faster than an Atom, and a lot of people use an Atom with ION graphics for a HTPC.

My HTPC is a AMD 2.4ghz S754 chip with a 4350 graphics card and it works fine when I use it.  Which is like once a year mostly for testing purposes.  I switched to using extenders everywhere.

[Chasseur]

I’d go with a 5450 or 5550. picture is great when connected with hdmi.

[RehabMan]

Thanks everyone.  The fact that I can use PCIe x16 2.x cards in PCIe x16 1.0 slot helps the selection process out quite a bit.

[Naylia]

I have a 5570 that is absolutely great, even letting me get away with some nice gaming at 720p. It’s a silenced low-profile 5570 that I have been using for about the last month. But I have been considering moving back to a full height case and getting a 5770 and just sucking it up and dealing with the fan. Depending on your time frame I’d probably be looking to sell the 5570 and could do a deal on it and match the price of that 8400GS.

[RehabMan]

Ended up getting this passive low-profile ready 5570:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161342

I bought the low-profile/fanless just in case I wanted to use it in a more HTPC oriented case in the future.

Also got the memory and the new CPU.  All hardware plus Win7 installed and working well.  The PC went from a complete clunker to a decent machine.  It is no Core i3, but it is going to work great serving my garage TV. Without the graphics card, it would make a not-so-bad WHS “Vail” machine.

The CPU upgrade turned out to be quite necessary because not all my HD content is hardware accelerated…. In particular quite a few HD-DVD (and Blu-ray for that matter) is VC-1 encoded, which for whatever reason, is not accelerated by the ATI 5570 card.  Playing back VC-1 content runs those cores up to 60-70%, so I think I would have been in big trouble with the original Athlon 64 3200+ chip.  The $50 upgrade to get the x2 (and faster at 3.0 GHz) was worth it.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I’m eyeing that card myself and plan to pick it up next month, so I can finally get some bitstreaming action going.

[Author]

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