PCI Dual VGA w/ HW MPEG

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05-10-2007, 12:26 PM
reece146

PCI Dual VGA w/ HW MPEG

I am looking for an additional display card to go into my EPIA (M10k-N) carputers.

Currently the onboard display chipset on the EPIA is used for displaying the cockpit GPS/Music/Mixer/Diagnostics interface and it works fine for this.

However, the system is going to be expanded to add headrest VGA displays for rear seat passengers to watch movies (independently).

We all know that the CPU performance on the EPIAs is, umm, limited.

The thought was that if there was a decent dual PCI display card that had hardware MPEG-2 decoding then the EPIA would not be too terribly burdened while playing two MPEG streams (i.e. DVDs) while running the normal cockpit console stuff.

Can anyone recommend a decent PCI card that is dual out and has hardware MPEG decode and is decently supported under Linux? I'd prefer to stick with NVIDIA based cards if possible.
05-11-2007, 09:26 AM
reece146

I'm surprised no one had any suggestions about this...

After doing some more searching around I'm going to order this card I think:

PNY Verto GeForce FX 5200 / 256MB DDR / PCI / Dual VGA / TV Out / Video Card

Seems decent... dual RAMDAC and no heat sink, HW MPEG decode. Who knows, maybe the boys will be able to play Vdrift head to head on this card (yeah, right).

Should be fun configuring xorg. :D
05-12-2007, 04:34 PM
reborg

Quote:

Originally Posted by reece146

I'm surprised no one had any suggestions about this...

After doing some more searching around I'm going to order this card I think:

PNY Verto GeForce FX 5200 / 256MB DDR / PCI / Dual VGA / TV Out / Video Card

Seems decent... dual RAMDAC and no heat sink, HW MPEG decode. Who knows, maybe the boys will be able to play Vdrift head to head on this card (yeah, right).

Should be fun configuring xorg. :D

You have a 250W PSU in an EPIA setup?
05-12-2007, 06:39 PM
reece146

Quote:

Originally Posted by reborg

You have a 250W PSU in an EPIA setup?

You think that card pulls 250W all on it's own? It's marketroid/conservative crap content in the specs I figure.

I forget what my setup is... something like 160-180W I think. I remember overspec'ing for EPIA because I was going to pull the board since the CPU sucked so much. In real usage it works fine so I haven't bothered.
05-14-2007, 03:41 AM
DeltaFX

Even an AGP8x Geforce4 ti 4800SE draws 35Watt....
05-15-2007, 05:20 PM
tigergibb

Minimum 250W PSU.. I'm sure that's if you're running a full size mobo/cpu set up. The EPIA draws a lot less power. I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to ask nvidia how much power it actually draws, or look for some spec sheets.

Is there such thing as something like this that runs on USB? My PCI port is blocked and I may intend to do the same thing later. I know there are some USB graphics cards.. but I would also need one that can decode MPEG-2. Or maybe it would be easier to see if I can fit a PCI riser that will make the card go sideways first?
05-15-2007, 11:53 PM
tripzero

The USB bus probably isn't fast enough for any decent graphics esp with any mpeg2 decoding. A pci riser card would be your best bet IMHO.
05-17-2007, 05:21 AM
tigergibb

I have two questions:

a) Wouldn't one with TV Out(Yellow RCA Jack) be easier? You could then buy cheaper non-vga monitors.

b) Did you find out how much power it draws?
05-17-2007, 07:19 AM
reece146

Quote:

Originally Posted by tigergibb

a) Wouldn't one with TV Out(Yellow RCA Jack) be easier? You could then buy cheaper non-vga monitors.

b) Did you find out how much power it draws?

The problem with TV Out is the quality (i.e. there is none). I was running an EPIA box in my living room as a MythTV client for a while and the image quality wasn't very good (IMO).

Still no idea on power. I've run the power simulator at mini-box.com with 2 "high end video cards" added to the matrix and it is still within the limits of my power supply. IIRC they estimate 45 W each.

I received the cards yesterday and have started working up a new configuration on one of the boxes. The base operating system is installed so far. My install image is a few years old so I'm taking the opportunity to start from scratch and document it at the same time. I won't know how it will work until I get multi-user X-Window w/ fvwm configured and am able to run the additional MPEG-2 streams simultaneously.
05-18-2007, 07:12 PM
reborg

Quote:

Originally Posted by reece146

Still no idea on power. I've run the power simulator at mini-box.com with 2 "high end video cards" added to the matrix and it is still within the limits of my power supply. IIRC they estimate 45 W each.

Sounds about right if it's being pushed. I was making the previous comment tongue-in-cheek, but forgot the smiley.