Minimum ATI Card that has good TV-OUT

[jjc]

I currently have a Pine GeForce2 MX200 32MB and I'm trying the TV out.  It's OK, but not great.  Expsecially since the winmame does that blurry thing a little compared to the older mame versions.  The card doesn't set any output if I run DosMame.  I've heard that aTI has the best TV-out.  Will a ATI Xpert 2000 PRO AGP 32MB DVD VIDEO PLAYBACK 128 BIT 3D  
 
do for $35 or should I just go for the 7500?  Also, is it worth even getting an ATI card since the difference may be minimal?  Please reply since I"m gonna go out after work and get one maybe...

[HeadRusch]

I just bought an 8500 for about $90 bucks.  The reason I got this was because the 8500 is actually a really good all around 3D Video Card, good for all modern games.  

I figured with this card I could run to a TV out at800x600 or so any modern PC game, including driving games for the home LAN, which would be cool.

The 7500 is lower powered, as its the older 128 chip "souped up", but its also a viable alternative in the $60 range.  

I'd avoid any of the $30 or $40 ATI cards however, especially if you're pairing them with a modern 1ghz+ processor.......those boards were designed back when "fast pc" meant 400 Mhz.

[Xiaou2]

 The blur thing is the screen streching.  You can turn that off.   Also turn off scanlines if running on a tv.   Lastly, and most importantly,  Composite will always be blurry.   You need s-video out.


  As for ATI, Id spend about 80-90$ on a recent one so that you get the best of both worlds.   My Radion VE (dual display + svideo out) cost me about that... and with the latest driver download... it up'ed my tv out resolution from 800*600 to 1024*768.   Much better for vector games, fullscreen window games, and dvd's.  

[HeadRusch]

80 bucks or so is now the ATI 8500 or 8500LE lines.  Perfectly suited to 2Ghz+ processors at resolutions below 1024x768.  

You can also spend a little less and go with a 7500LE for like $50 bucks.  Not quite as speedy, but if you dont plan on running modern games with the computer in the cab (by that I mean, PC games.....like you might want to fire up a game of CounterStrike on the mame cab), then you can easily get by with the 7500 and still get decent modern-day game performance out of it.  

I'm going to have to run Composite myself into my 27" TV.........its older, no SVideo in.
Perhaps when I see a sale I'll pick up an SVideo ready 27" later this year.

[lightspeed]

I'd start with the Radeon 7200 - you can find these for less than $30, and they do MAME just fine.  However, I'll agree with the approach that the others took above - if you expect to play more than MAME, you may want to spend the additional $ for a higher-end card.

The Xpert should work fine, but I would think thats the bare minimum - I had a 3D Rage II a while back that worked OK with normal resolutions, but hardware stretch would cause even basic games to stutter.  

In terms of how old of a card you can use, this will be the limiting factor - some older cards do not offer hardware strecth, or take a performance hit with it enabled.   A Radeon card handles these fine, and should offer decent triple-buffering support when they get it fixed in MAME.


As an aside, make sure you get a card that says "Made by ATI" or "Built by ATI" rather than a "Powered by ATI" card.  The "powered" cards are 3rd party cards based on ATI technology, but their TV out quality is generally not as good as cards actually manufactured by ATI.