ATI AIW 9600XT 128MB for $199 at Best Buy

M

Mihai Dobrin

First...I have the following system

WIN XP Pro with SP1
P4 3.0Ghz 1MB L2
1GB DDR 400Mhz

I am still using a 6 year old Nvidia TNT PCI 16MB card and I am looking to
upgrade.
I don't really play games...as you can tell. What I want is PVR capabilities

I would like to encode MPEG 2 movies and other programs from the tv tuner.

The new X800 does hardware assisted MPEG2..MPEG4 encoding.

But what about the AIW 9600XT ? Or should I wait for the X600 AIW AGP 8x
verson if
they ever make one..
 
C

Cullinane

First...I have the following system

WIN XP Pro with SP1
P4 3.0Ghz 1MB L2
1GB DDR 400Mhz

I am still using a 6 year old Nvidia TNT PCI 16MB card and I am looking to
upgrade.
I don't really play games...as you can tell. What I want is PVR capabilities

I would like to encode MPEG 2 movies and other programs from the tv tuner.

The new X800 does hardware assisted MPEG2..MPEG4 encoding.

But what about the AIW 9600XT ? Or should I wait for the X600 AIW AGP 8x
verson if
they ever make one..
Click to expand...

I have one...with almost the same system you have except I only have
512megs of ram.
Never dropped one frame while recording in the highest quality mpeg2
dvd-high pvr setting.
And I've done that for hours at a time. Very impressive.
Is hardware encoding on the X800 mean better quality? Or less chance
of dropped frames?
Concerning mpeg4...the pvr setting of 'home theatre' is divx
encoded...it's good quality but useless for me.
I paid $300 for the thing back in February.
 
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