Page 2: Testing, Conclusion
Installation and Testing:
I planned on using the card in a MythTV frontend paired with a VIA ITX board. That situation proved futile as the fglrx nor the open source ati driver supports XVMC which is a requirement for this VIA ITX board since the CPU isn't strong enough to handle MPEG2 decoding for streaming (crazy, I know). My plans were shot for this card, but there is hope for other uses. With Windows, it supports all the nice video codec offloading functions that UVD (ATI's form of offloading video processing) provides. You can use this card well with Windows Media Center edition, but this goes against my choice of software so I don't recommend using it. I'm pretty sure that ATI will release a fglrx with XVMC (or the new VA API) sooner or later.
Now other than not supporting something I need, the card works well for what it should be doing. It has reasonable 3D support (you won't be playing Crysis on it, but you can play other recent 3D games with acceptable speed), full HDMI with audio support, and supports the low profile form factor. This along with the price means that the card fits the intended purpose well. For Linux users, you'll need to pair this up with a good CPU to make full use of MythTV. There are ITX motherboards that have Core CPUs these days so there is no worry on that front.
Conclusion:
I know you expect video cards to be rather expensive, but you can pick up this one for a scant $40. That's right... forty dollars. It is the price that is the saving grace of this product. Sapphire really knows how to capture all corners of the market and the price point along with the form factor of the 3450 really can't be beat. I can't recommend it for Linux/MythTV users due to no XVMC support, but Windows users can get an inexpensive card that will run rings around any on-board video.
I'd like to thank Don from Sapphire for making this review possible.
I planned on using the card in a MythTV frontend paired with a VIA ITX board. That situation proved futile as the fglrx nor the open source ati driver supports XVMC which is a requirement for this VIA ITX board since the CPU isn't strong enough to handle MPEG2 decoding for streaming (crazy, I know). My plans were shot for this card, but there is hope for other uses. With Windows, it supports all the nice video codec offloading functions that UVD (ATI's form of offloading video processing) provides. You can use this card well with Windows Media Center edition, but this goes against my choice of software so I don't recommend using it. I'm pretty sure that ATI will release a fglrx with XVMC (or the new VA API) sooner or later.
Now other than not supporting something I need, the card works well for what it should be doing. It has reasonable 3D support (you won't be playing Crysis on it, but you can play other recent 3D games with acceptable speed), full HDMI with audio support, and supports the low profile form factor. This along with the price means that the card fits the intended purpose well. For Linux users, you'll need to pair this up with a good CPU to make full use of MythTV. There are ITX motherboards that have Core CPUs these days so there is no worry on that front.
Conclusion:
I know you expect video cards to be rather expensive, but you can pick up this one for a scant $40. That's right... forty dollars. It is the price that is the saving grace of this product. Sapphire really knows how to capture all corners of the market and the price point along with the form factor of the 3450 really can't be beat. I can't recommend it for Linux/MythTV users due to no XVMC support, but Windows users can get an inexpensive card that will run rings around any on-board video.
I'd like to thank Don from Sapphire for making this review possible.