[bigwill64]

So with an upcoming purchase of a new home, i really want to rip all my DVD's (about 300+) and create my first HTPC system. Im still planning to use my Blu-Ray player for my Blu-Ray but i have a ton of box sets and movies on DVD not worth going to blu-ray.

Im getting great advice here on a potential system but one thing that strikes me... video cards


As I mentioned im just going to play my DVD's for now , so is it worth going with a high end vid card or one that is built in to the mb sufficient. HDMI of course.

considering the ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890GX HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
and using the built in Vid board (ATI Radeon HD 4290)

or should i go with a much better card? a stand-alone card (1 GB mem) ?

This would be an XBMC on top of Ubuntu 10.11 . I already have my gaming machine , so this build is strictly HTPC.

thanks in advance!

[Kirky99]

The 4290 is adequate for DVD playback (SD) nd probably no problem with HD. If you seriously step into HD playback you'll want something better, but you can get all the bells and whistles (3D, bit streaming audio, etc) for like $25 or less after rebate.

Someone was explaining to me yesterday at work, they were getting a HTPC'S and it was going to run them $1600. The video card was like $350, hexacore processor, etc. I laughed.

[Balinus]

Someone was explaining to me yesterday at work, they were getting a HTPC'S and it was going to run them $1600. The video card was like $350, hexacore processor, etc. I laughed.

With your knowledge, there's money to make!

[Mar16]

If you are going to be using ubuntu, you are better off with a nvidia card, you will have lots of problems trying to setup the ati card up properly. You can something like the geforce gt240, that would be able to do HD video perfectly.

[Kirky99]

With your knowledge, there's money to make!

Too late... Everything is at his house. He's just waiting for the delivery of his 1200 watt power supply he won on eBay for $250!