[Windows] CrystalHD or a video card with VPDAU?
#1
Question 
Folks, trying to decide what to do.

Looking at the CrystalHD cards, they are about $70USD at the moment and i can pick up an Nvidia Geforce 8 card for about $100USD.

Any gotcha's with the Nvidia card? read a few threads that i need to have a nightly build for both on windows (doesn't bother me).

Thoughts? Comments?

-Boris
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#2
Well first...there is no VDPAU for windows. It will be called DXVA for something similar. The Geforce 8 series will not hardware decode all VC1 encodes, so be aware of that. If you arent using it for games and only for video you might be better off getting a Geforce 2xx series.
Main - Intel E6750 C2D (2.66ghz)/Geforce 240
Bedroom - Intel E3300 C2D (2.5ghz)/Geforce 210
Guest Bedroom - Acer Revo 1600/ION LE
Test Desktop - Intel Q9300 C2Q (2.5ghz)/Geforce 9600 GSO
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#3
That's pretty expensive for a geforce 8.
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#4
bobo1on1 Wrote:That's pretty expensive for a geforce 8.

It does seem a lot. I bought a new 9400GT for £32 (about $46) from eBay.

I would go for the Geforce card on the grounds it will make everything faster while the Crystal will only accelerate apps that support it.

I suspect the Crystal won't be a commercial success. The only way it's going to get mainstream acceptance is by OEMs building it into motherboards, but I suspect acceleration will end up being done by the video chipsets, leaving the Crystal out in the cold.

JR
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#5
jhsrennie Wrote:I suspect the Crystal won't be a commercial success. The only way it's going to get mainstream acceptance is by OEMs building it into motherboards, but I suspect acceleration will end up being done by the video chipsets, leaving the Crystal out in the cold.

It will and they are Smile
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#6
Thanks for the reply folks, its appreciated!!

i was hoping to get away with one, all-in-wonder card as my HTPC is a bunch of old parts cobbled together and only has 2 PCIe slots. One slot is being used for my vid card and the other for my TV capture card, so I was hoping to get away with replacing just the vid card with one that had h.264 support.

The HTPC hardware run's 720p ok, but pukes on anything higher, so I am hoping the crystal HD card will sort out playing my 1080p h.264 files. The issue I get is video/audio being out of synch in xbmc. If I reboot and close all my open apps (like vmware), it seems to just keep in synch.

thanks tho folks, helps a bunch!

-Boris.

p.s. Davilla, any ideas when the next stable release of xbmc will be posted? i've got no issues running a nightly build to get crystalHD support, but curious more than anything.
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#7
BorisTheMidget Wrote:p.s. Davilla, any ideas when the next stable release of xbmc will be posted? i've got no issues running a nightly build to get crystalHD support, but curious more than anything.

As we have mentioned before, when we and testers are happy, then we talk about a new release.
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#8
davilla Wrote:It will and they are Smile

It would be massively cool for the Crystal or something like it to become a standard part of PCs. Arguably it should be part of the CPU just as math coprocessors started as separate chips and ended up integrated into the CPU. Have you got any links for manufacturers who are integrating the Crystal?

JR
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[Windows] CrystalHD or a video card with VPDAU?0