Using a widescreen TV as a monitor question

[The Seabat]

Howdy: My daughter has a 47" Phillips LCD TV and wants to use her HP
Pavilion 513c with it. This TV only has HDMI jacks (and PBY jacks?) so
instead of hooking up two to four adapters to get from a D-Sub
connector to the HDMI, I was thinking of getting this video card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161010

and install it into one of the PCI slots and then hook it up to the
TV. Will this work? Will this computer have enough juice to power and
use this TV as a monitor? It's running Windows XP Home SP3 with 256GB
of RAM and a 1.8GHz chip. Don't know the wattage of the PSU. Any
suggestions? She will mainly be using email, light web surfing (eBay)
and storing photos. Maybe watching the occasional avi video. What's
the consensus on this idea? Thanks.

The Seabat

 

[Paul]

Howdy: My daughter has a 47" Phillips LCD TV and wants to use her HP
Pavilion 513c with it. This TV only has HDMI jacks (and PBY jacks?) so
instead of hooking up two to four adapters to get from a D-Sub
connector to the HDMI, I was thinking of getting this video card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161010

and install it into one of the PCI slots and then hook it up to the
TV. Will this work? Will this computer have enough juice to power and
use this TV as a monitor? It's running Windows XP Home SP3 with 256GB
of RAM and a 1.8GHz chip. Don't know the wattage of the PSU. Any
suggestions? She will mainly be using email, light web surfing (eBay)
and storing photos. Maybe watching the occasional avi video. What's
the consensus on this idea? Thanks.

The Seabat

The problem with that computer, is there is no high bandwidth
slot available for video. Just PCI.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...dlc=en&cc=us&site=null&key=null&product=90832

The available bandwidth is also shared, so more than just the
video card will be using bandwidth. For example, updating the
screen, might cause the sound to break up. Or, reading from
the hard drive, might make the AVI video a bit glitchy.

Read the reviews on Newegg, for various PCI based cards, and
see what people think of them, in terms of stuttering or
being slow.

This card is much more expensive, at $83. It's a bit more
buzz-word compliant, and if you end up putting the card
in your junk box, it might make a nicer card for later
(i.e. driver support). It has an HDMI on the faceplate,
so no dongle needed. Alternately, if you need to, you
can fit a dongle to the DVI port, to make an HDMI output
(using a passive DVI to HDMI dongle). Apparently, audio
over HDMI works with this one. So when you play a video,
you might even manage to get sound from the TV speakers.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131325

I have an FX5200 PCI here, but it stays in my junk box,
because I can't stand to keep it in the computer for
too long. I can easily tell the difference, when it's in
the computer in place of my regular card. I use it mainly
for testing, if some other video card is busted.

The HD 4350 is around 8.1 watts at idle. That is based on the
measured result here for a HD 4550, which is the same chip
as the 4350, only the 4350 runs the memory slower. Since you're
not likely to be gaming with it too much, it isn't likely to
run "3D peak" power of 18.5 watts.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ati-radeon-hd4550_4.html#sect0

I can't find a power number for the 9250. Instead, all I can offer
is this page, where they suggest "250 watt power supply". The
card is probably in the 25W range, but I can't be sure of that.
The 9250 would be an older card than the 4350, in case
that isn't clear.

http://www.visiontek.com/dms59-cards/radeon-9250.html

Paul

 

[Hot-Text]

It have a PC monitor pug-in on the Phillips LCD TV

$15 for monitor cord that plug to TV to PC

For I running that way ok!

 

[The Seabat]

Wow, thanks Paul. You gave me a whole lot to think about. It looks
like it will work, but the sound might be iffy. I don't think that
would be a big problem.

Do you think that increasing the RAM any would help the video?

 

[The Seabat]

Noted, thank you. I will so inform her.

 

[Paul]

Wow, thanks Paul. You gave me a whole lot to think about. It looks
like it will work, but the sound might be iffy. I don't think that
would be a big problem.

Do you think that increasing the RAM any would help the video?

System RAM is going to be an issue, for whatever program delivers
the content. System RAM is used to load a media player, for
example. Video card RAM, is generally of most use for 3D games.
The frame buffer requirements on video card RAM, are pretty modest.
So when a video card has a "1GB memory", only a tiny portion of that
holds the frame buffer (image of the screen).

A computer with 256MB of memory installed, isn't going to be
able to run many programs simultaneously. I gave a 512MB WinXP
machine to a relative, and I could generally run about three
things, and felt it was still a tight fit. (But for the
person using it, that probably wasn't going to be a problem.)
I would think a 256MB machine would spend at least
some of its time paging.

You can check for RAM upgrades here. They claim the machine
can take 2x1GB DDR memory.

http://www.crucial.com/store/ListParts.aspx?model=Pavilion 513c

The motherboard page here, mentions PC2100/PC1600, but you can
use faster memory if you want. PC3200 will run at PC2700/PC2100/PC1600,
so can be used in an older machine. There are only a couple
obscure cases, where such a purchase is not advised (some Nforce
IGP based systems, which had bad BIOS designs).

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...dlc=en&cc=us&site=null&key=null&product=90832

The only place I wouldn't buy a 1GB DDR stick, is from Ebay. If
you wanted to dabble with 512MB DDR from Ebay, then no problem. But for
1GB sticks, there is a danger you could get "high density" 1GB
sticks. With things like 512MB DDR sticks, there is less danger
of something like that happening. And if you buy it from
Crucial, they're not likely to be selling "high density"
memory. The low density 1GB stuff is more likely to be compatible
with everything. Branded memory vendors, generally don't want
to get caught, selling the other stuff.

So, yes, you can upgrade. I'd probably want at least 512MB
total, so setting up 256MB+256MB or 256MB+512MB might make
sense. Or go crazy, and buy a 1GB stick to add to it.
Check the memory slots first, to see whether there
are one or two sticks already present.

If you install new RAM, test first with a memtest floppy,
before attempting to boot Windows. Only do the boot
into Windows, if the memory is clean and error free.

http://www.memtest.org/

Spending too much money, to upgrade an old machine,
may not be the best idea in the long run. It all depends
on how much longer you think that machine will be of
use to the owner.

Paul

 

[pjp]

I have a 9250 card and it all works including the composite video out to an
analog tv's composite input and using it for dual head to separate analog
monitors. Problem is no lcd tv so if you wanna send me one for testing I'll
let you know how it goes