AGP V7700 vs ATI Radeon

[Guest]

I am just now considering purchasing a really high end video card, for the express purpose of inputting video from a cam corder and burning CD's with MPEG.

In the reviews it seems that Tom's reviewer says the Radeon wins out but he does not consider that the Radeon is processor dependent (I am stuck with a PII 350MHz for now), and the GeForce AGP is supposedly not, guarantees 704 x 480 at 30 FPS. Anyone have experience with this? Thanks in advance.

 

[Kodiak]

>> really high end video card, for the express purpose

why don't you get a dedicated card, firewire ports etc? Neither one of Asus/ATI are really "high end", they're more of "jack of all trades, master of none" kind of thing... if you really have one purpose need here, get a card that serves that one purpose only...

that being said, the feeling I got from Tom's and other reviews is that Asus is better if you're gamer who wants to play a bit with multimedia (because GF2 engine is better in 3d), and ATI is better if you want to do more multimedia with some 3d gaming (although it still does 3d good enough for all current games, it may not 6 months/year from now)...

it seems to me you'd fall into the second category...

good luck either way

 

[Guest]

any suggestions? I have S-video, and normal RCA jacks output from my Sony Hi8; I suppose I would need something that converts that to firewire, and then that is really a hardware solution, do software solutions come bundled with such products, I'm really looking to just get pointed in the right direction. Thanks.

 

[Guest]

I have had the ATI all in wonder 128 and have just purchased the ASUS 7700 Deluxe. The ATI did have good video capture, I have a k7-650 with 256Mb ram and 2 20gb 7200 rpm hardrives striped and the ATI would capture fine at 30fps at 352x240 but could go no higher because I am using Win2000 and ATI has not gotten off their ass yet to release good capture drivers for it. Because of the ATI drivers I went out and got the ASUS 7700 Deluxe, Asus has alot of the same problems. Their capture drivers are also not very mature, but they do support the higher resolutions of 640x480 and above... My ASUS can also capture at 30fps in 352x240 (VCR quality) I noticed no difference in the quality of the asus vs the ati but I have not had a chance to try the Radeon...

Also an important thing to consider is the codec you are using to capture and what quality of audio you are capturing with it. the 30fps figures I quoted are using VirtualDub with the Huffy Codec and CD-Quality audio. After capturing is done I edit out the comercials and re-encode using DIVX for the video and MP3 for the audio, so far this seems to work good for me because a 30min show on TV end up about 3GB intitially with huffy and then compresses to around 120MB with DIVX.

Also a thing to consider is that when I am capturing at 30fps my Cpu utilization is at 97%, so there is a bottleneck there, I assume this could have to do with drivers becouse ASUS advertises that the card can to 720x480 at 30fps but ONLY in Win98.....

Hope this helps you...