vivitron 15
08-31-2008, 04:34 PM
I'm looking to build a new pc, that needs to be dual purpose. I will use it as a media center, and also as a desktop pc for general word, excel etc. I won't be using it for games at all.
My setup is as follows:
I use a pc monitor (currently hooked up through VGA)
I have a 50" plasma (1080i/720p) tv that I would like hooking up to the pc through the dvi port (I currently do this with an hdmi>dvi adapter)
I also have an old VCR that takes the signal from the pc (svideo out) and distributes it around the other tvs in the house.
At the moment, I have a single graphics card and I just mess about swapping cables and settings to get the two outputs that I want.
I am looking to get a new pc. In this pc, I am considering a decent graphics card for the plasma and other tvs in the house (dvi and svideo respectively) and a cheap and cheerful pci graphics card to run the pc monitor. As i said, the monitor will only ever display MS Office and other trivial software, so I am not concerned about graphics ability.
I am very out of touch with graphics cards (and pc hardware in general), so was wondering what people thought of htis setup?
I am considering buying:
an 8600 GT (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135098) as the main card
and this one (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119724) as the cheap card, to run the monitor.
Do these seem any good? Would the main one be powerful enough to watch h.264 videos through? Would I be able to watch two different h.264 files through the different outputs (I could live with these monitors being clones of one another, but would prefer them not to be)?
Thanks a lot!
oh, and for reference, I am looking to get:
This motherboard (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/113965/show_product_overview#specifications)
with a core 2 duo E6850 CPU (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130483/show_product_overview#specifications), housed in an Antec Sonata III case (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128045) and 4GB of RAM (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142403).
edit to add: I'm looking to bring this (and a HDD and a DVD burner) in for around £400-£450, so I wouldn't want to go too much more expensive, if I don't have to!
My setup is as follows:
I use a pc monitor (currently hooked up through VGA)
I have a 50" plasma (1080i/720p) tv that I would like hooking up to the pc through the dvi port (I currently do this with an hdmi>dvi adapter)
I also have an old VCR that takes the signal from the pc (svideo out) and distributes it around the other tvs in the house.
At the moment, I have a single graphics card and I just mess about swapping cables and settings to get the two outputs that I want.
I am looking to get a new pc. In this pc, I am considering a decent graphics card for the plasma and other tvs in the house (dvi and svideo respectively) and a cheap and cheerful pci graphics card to run the pc monitor. As i said, the monitor will only ever display MS Office and other trivial software, so I am not concerned about graphics ability.
I am very out of touch with graphics cards (and pc hardware in general), so was wondering what people thought of htis setup?
I am considering buying:
an 8600 GT (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135098) as the main card
and this one (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119724) as the cheap card, to run the monitor.
Do these seem any good? Would the main one be powerful enough to watch h.264 videos through? Would I be able to watch two different h.264 files through the different outputs (I could live with these monitors being clones of one another, but would prefer them not to be)?
Thanks a lot!
oh, and for reference, I am looking to get:
This motherboard (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/113965/show_product_overview#specifications)
with a core 2 duo E6850 CPU (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130483/show_product_overview#specifications), housed in an Antec Sonata III case (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128045) and 4GB of RAM (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142403).
edit to add: I'm looking to bring this (and a HDD and a DVD burner) in for around £400-£450, so I wouldn't want to go too much more expensive, if I don't have to!