Low power graphics card to hook 720p plasma TV to via HDMI

eric239

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Nov 18, 2011
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Hello,

I have Samsung PN42B450 42-Inch 720p Plasma HDTV.
It used to have an Acer Aspire netbook hooked up to it. The graphics there was Nvidia ION Lite. The ION supported TV's native 720p (1280x720) resolution moderately well (the windows desktop was a bit crappy, but watching movies via either MPC-HC or XBMC was fine).
The little Acer recently went to greener pastures and I decided to build a slightly better "home theater-like" PC.
After some research, I settled on the new AMD Zacate E350 platform with its integrated graphics (AMD Radeon HD 6310). Having successfully built the PC and installed Win7 Home Premium with all the latest drivers from AMD and Asus (mobo vendor) I now face the following problem: the integrated AMD chipset support 1024x768 (and a few other 4:3 resolutions) beautifully, much better than the old ION used to do. However, it almost can't handle 1280x720 (chosen as "1280x720" or "720p" in AMD's fancy control software). The picture is a piece of crap both when rendering normal windows stuff as well as trying to watch a movie full-screen via either MPC-HC, XBMC under windows, or XBMC Live. So I'm forced to watch everything in 4:3 ration until I remedy the situation :(

The HDMI cable is the same I used with the Acer netbook (which dealt with 720p fairly well), so I don't think it is to blame.

It seems to me my only option to try to fix the problem and salvage most of the hardware is to try to find a not-very-power-hungry graphics card that has high likelihood of working well with my TV.
The MB I used is ASUS E35M1-M PRO. It has the following expansion slots:
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x1
2 x PCI
The PSU is Antec EA-380D.

Any troubleshooting suggestions and graphics card recommendations will be much appreciated!

Thanks.
 

eric239

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Nov 18, 2011
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18,510

Thanks for the suggestion, though it seems (based on a simple google search) there're many folks complaining of very similar issues with this card.
I'm beginning to wonder if this (HDMI issues) is a common problem with low-grade ATI/AMD cards...
 

I have had a 5450 and it still runs. Great hdmi card considering it is like 15 bucks.