Which Video Card?

[skorpi0wn]

I've decided to go the TV + S-Video route, but I can't seem to find any cheap video cards with S-Video capability that are PCI.  Unfortunately, I don't have AGP on the board I'm using for my cabinet.  Does anyone have any recommendations for a good PCI card with S-Video that will work well with a Toshiba 27" TV?

Thanks in advance.

[LsLSpamMatt]

Skorp,

I have yet to built a cabinet (it's coming together), but I just received an AGP version of an ATI Radeon 7000 with S-Video output.  
It works much much better than the TNT 2 Ultra I was doing s-video out with.
I don't know of any reason the PCI version would perform noticeably different.
I would recommend that you go to www.newegg.com and search for 7000 PCI.
I found one on there for $41, and shipping might be free.
My advice, however, is to make sure you get a card with a "Standard" 4 pin S-video plug on it.  I have had several cards with TV out that apparently are proprietary plugs, and I haven't put the effort into replacing the lost cables.  If you get the Regular 4 pin s-video plug (look carefully at newegg's pictures), you can replace the cable easily.

Matt

[somunny]

I started off with an AGP ATI Radeon 8500.  I had so many problems with it (driver and DX9, i believe) that I canned it for an Nvidia FX5200.

I have the AGP version, but they do make a PCI version with s-video out.  I see them on ebay for $40 to $50.

Coop

[skorpi0wn]

I ended up ordering this card: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-318&depa=0  before any of the posts were left.

I hope this works out.  It's supposed to be at my place today.  Will have to rip it open when I get home from work!

[bionicbadger]

Go to ebay and buy a cheap old made by ATI card for $5.
MAME doesn't need anything fancy,  an old 4 or 8MB card will work fine.  I have an old rage II card I got off ebay that I use in my cab with a 27" toshiba and it works great.

[MonitorGuru]

Go to ebay and buy a cheap old made by ATI card for $5.
MAME doesn't need anything fancy,  an old 4 or 8MB card will work fine.  I have an old rage II card I got off ebay that I use in my cab with a 27" toshiba and it works great.

Not exactly true.  Mame32 and all the Windows variants DO like extra hardware power if you start playing around with all the features like hardware stretch, scanlines/rgb effects and many other things that require DirectX/3d compliant video cards with tons of memory (32-64meg)

If however you use AdvanceMame out to an arcade monitor, or even Dos mame, then you don't need the extra power as they don't do all the funky stuff with the video, they output at a 1:1 ratio for the most part.  I used a 4 meg old PCI card and it worked great on AdvanceMame to an arcade monitor, but wouldn't work at all with any version of Mame past about .54 in Windows.

So it all depends on:
Windows vs Dos vs Unix
PC Multi sync monitor vs Arcade Monitor
Mame version (old or new)
Video effects such as hardware stretch, blur, rgb effects, scanlines vs 1:1 output
Mame exe type (Dos Mame, Unix Mame, Mac Mame, Arcade(Advance)Mame, Mame32, Mame32Plus, etc..)

Taken together determine your graphics (and CPU) requirements.