What component out video card to use?

[recklessindian]

I am updating my mame machine.  I am going to put in a 27 inch sony wega trinitron tv.  It has component video outputs that I want to take full advantage of.  But what cards are available at a reasonable price?  I am doing this at a reduced budget because of many other plans, including a touchscreen juke box. 

[mn_big_dog]

are you looking for AGP, PCI-x, PCI?

[DJ_Izumi]

Don't pretty much ALL of ATi and Nvidia's offerings built in the last 6+ years offer component with the appropriate dongle?

[Nataq]

Pretty much all radeon card works with this adapter :http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10419&cs_id=1041901&p_id=2398&seq=1&format=2

As for Nvidia this is another story. That is pretty rare.

[recklessindian]

Don't pretty much ALL of ATi and Nvidia's offerings built in the last 6+ years offer component with the appropriate dongle?

Does that mean, I will have to use an adapter.  If that is the case, which is the best one to use.  I thought there was some signal quality lost with the use of one.

[DJ_Izumi]

Does that mean, I will have to use an adapter.  If that is the case, which is the best one to use.  I thought there was some signal quality lost with the use of one.

I will admit zero knowledge of how things work on Nvidia cards, I've never used one.  However most ATi cards can output component through their TV out port where you'd usually put an S-video cable.  The only issue is most cards didn't SHIP with this dongle included.  You'd have to aquire it after market.

For example, depending on if your ATi card had a 7 pin or a 9 pin TV out port, it'd use either of these:
http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=2766464
http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=2550138

They are simple adaptors you should be able to find them all over eBay and in a bunch of sites.  Nothing complicated.

That said I've never actually WORKED with a component adaptor on an ATi card either. D:  But it all looks pretty straight forward for either ATi or Nvidia.

[Blanka]

I feel so sorry for Americans with these stories over and over again. Why did you guys never got good RGB/Svideo inputs on your CRT TV's?

[mn_big_dog]

Actually....most crt TV's have a s-video input......unless they are ancient.

[dmarcum99]

I'd like to know as I'm in the same boat as reckless...  I have Sony KV-24FS120 that doesn't play nice with my two video cards.  I'd be glad to buy a inexpensive, confirmed card that outpts SD over component cables.

I have two video cards tha both came with their own dongle and I cannot get them to output a SD signal via component.  I have a Sony KV-24FS120 that will not display a proper image with my nvidia 8500GT (gigabyte with gigabyte dongle) or my ATI 3870 (with ATI dongle).

Both of the cards output an outstanding picture on my HDTV, but going SD through component is a no-go.  With the 8500GT, all I get is a scrambled picture.  After downloading the gigabyte manual, it doesn't even list displaying SD through component as a possibility.  It even goes out of its way to describe that if you need to, you can plug only the blue cable up through the dongle and get it to play as a composite connection.  My ATI, will display through component, but the colors are crazy and the ATI control panel shows as composite.

So at this time, I am stuck using S-video or composite on both cards.

[DJ_Izumi]

That's interesting.  Hmm, I might go to the computer store and dig through their used accessory bins, if I can find a 9pin ATi dongle I'll experiment myself.  It's sad to think that the cards offer component out but only at high definition resolutions.

[solid12345]

I feel so sorry for Americans with these stories over and over again. Why did you guys never got good RGB/Svideo inputs on your CRT TV's?

What I always found ironic is how the UK and Europe had better connections yet if you compare say BBC television to standard American television in the 70s and 80s, American networks
generally had better picture, old BBC shows like Monty Python always came across as blurry to me.

[DJ_Izumi]

I feel so sorry for Americans with these stories over and over again. Why did you guys never got good RGB/Svideo inputs on your CRT TV's?

Low expectations.  Heck, do you know how many people have bought shiney high def TVs in North America yet happily have their DVD players or video came consoles hooked up over composite video?

[Nataq]

Pretty much all radeon card works with this adapter :http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10419&cs_id=1041901&p_id=2398&seq=1&format=2

As for Nvidia this is another story. That is pretty rare.

ATI owner... read this again. This is a no brainer and cannot be cheaper. Read reviews and you will see that it is working for everybody.

[lilshawn]

some people say that NTSC stands for "never the same color" just because of how the NTSC signal is encoded then decoded makes all the colors shift slightly.

and that's why north american tvs have a tint control option....


wait....what was the question again?!

[mn_big_dog]

Still waiting to hear what kind of card is needed (AGP, PCIx or PCI)
Impossible to give you advise on which card to buy if we don't know what kind you need.

[DJ_Izumi]

Still waiting to hear what kind of card is needed (AGP, PCIx or PCI)
Impossible to give you advise on which card to buy if we don't know what kind you need.

It actually shouldn't matter.  The TV out features on almost every card in a graphics chip family are pretty much identical.

[lilshawn]

P.S. if your running Mame..... any graphical stuff is going to be done through software anyways. having an obscenely priced dual SLI card with the super cool cooler and a terabyte of RAM wont do any better than an old tnt2 setup IMO...not that thats worth anything.

IM other O - if you want to gain with Mame, aim for CPU power.

sorry it doesn't ryhme. but seriously just boost your cpu and you will be in 16 bit heaven

[mn_big_dog]

DJ....Actually, it does matter.  He came here asking for recommendations on a card.  He didn't ask what "graphics family" he should buy from.  He asked what cards will work for him and are reasonably priced.

[DJ_Izumi]

DJ....Actually, it does matter.  He came here asking for recommendations on a card.  He didn't ask what "graphics family" he should buy from.  He asked what cards will work for him and are reasonably priced.

Since the component output features in each graphics card family are basically the same, it does't matter.  If he's building for MAME, any ATi card that'll fit in the mobo should work.  The best answer is probably 'The cheapest one'.

[lilshawn]

copied from another post...


if it fits, works, and has the output you need, get it and use it. it's not going to be worked hard to build polygons or anything...so basically if it can display the windows desktop, it's allready WAY over qualified

When will MAME use Direct3D/OpenGL to emulate 3D games?
Probably not ever, at least in the sense this question is likely being asked. MAME now uses Direct3D (and SDLMAME uses OpenGL) to composite and scale the game graphics, artwork elements, and MAME UI displays, but the actual 3D rendering is always done in software in order to ensure consistent operation across different video cards and operating systems.
Additionally, the bottleneck for many 3D games in MAME is actually their insanely fast RISC processor rather than the actual 3D rendering. This is the case in games such as Crusin USA, Killer Instinct (which has no 3D hardware anyway), and Gauntlet Legends.

[TOK]

I feel so sorry for Americans with these stories over and over again. Why did you guys never got good RGB/Svideo inputs on your CRT TV's?

We did. Pretty much every mid grade and up TV made since the 90's has S-Video. Higher end stuff got Component, but that was within a couple years of the emergence of plasma and LCD TV's.

There wasn't a large amount of people looking to hook computers to TV's until recently, so video card manufacturers treat it as a niche. DVI and HDMI (via converter or native on the card) is common, but those are mainly being used for home theater PC's not MAME.

[dmarcum99]

Please don't take my comment the wrong way.  I'm curious like the original poster...If anyone ready my post a few days ago, it really does matter what actual model # of video card will output SD through component.

I'm living proof that you can buy a video card and it not output SD over component.  I have both NVIDIA and ATI cards that don't play nice.  With the NVIDIA 8500GT, I could do a switcharoo from s-video to component while in vista (32bit) while it was running but it wouldn't remember the settings after a reboot and I'd have to do it all over again.  But, I wanted to hide the OS, so I went to XP(64).  Now with XP, I can't do the switcharoo nor can I get it to work after a forced TV detection.  My ATI came with a component dongle and won't output the right signal no matter what.  Do those component over DVI dongles work with the ATI 3750?

What I'm hoping to hear from our members are specific video cards (include model please) that they are using right now that are outputting SD over component.  Hopefully there are some current or semi-current cards that people are using....and I don't want to waste any more money and time.

[TOK]

I'm using an ATI Radeon 9550 with the DVI to component converter. Its an old card now, but you can probably find a newer ATI card that supports component. The 8500 to 9800 series ATI seemed to be really good for this. Lots of people struggled with NVidia.

[recklessindian]

Still waiting to hear what kind of card is needed (AGP, PCIx or PCI)
Impossible to give you advise on which card to buy if we don't know what kind you need.

I am going to get a used computer soon.  There seems to be  quite a few local options for that.  Once I decide what video card and dongle/adapter options I have then I will get the "new" used computer.   I guess I may not have done this in the normal order of things:  first tv (have that), then video card, then computer. 

[Nataq]

ATI DVI to component dongle works with all brands of :

ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500, 8500DV, RADEON
9500, 9550, 9600, 9700 & 9800 series of video cards.

I am using one myself and image quality is great. Keep in mind though that it will run in 640X480 interlace no matter what resolution you chose. Different resolutions will scale the screen only. To get native (or arcade) resolution on your TV using components you need an external VGA to component transcoder (no scaling). Correct me if I am wrong but every graphic cards TV out wont work since they dont push true resolution out of the card but resolutions that are scale to a TV format (640X480 in the case of standard CRT). So a common arcade resolution of 320X240 will give you a shrink image on the TV taking half the screen space (half of 640X480). You need to use the VGA output to get unchanged resolution output. But yes a standard resolution CRT can do 320X240 progressive but with a VGA to component transcoder. So if you are aiming at native resolution no dongles/cables/softwares will be able to display it on your standard TVon its own.

I hope I am clear and feel free to correct me if something is wrong here but that is what I've learned so far trying to get native res. I am waiting for my transcoder in the mail and will give you more feedback when it will arrive.

[Nataq]

Received transcoder. Work as I tought it would except I am losing color depth. Transcoder is probably downgrading the output somehow. Probably why there is 25$ ones and 150$ ones. I did get 320x240 displayed correctly (full screen) on the TV. TV out is better for now so I will stick with it and forget the transcoder (probably or give it some more time to see if I can set it up better)