Man, I just received the Sapphire Radeon 9550SE card today and guess
what... I can not for the life of me get the TV out to work properly.
The image is all washed out, flickering up and down, and in black and
white. Terrible. I used their include VGA to composite adapter and
hooked to the composte in of my TV. I also played with the settings
in ATI, but nothing works.

What a drag. I put in a trouble ticket with ATI. Hopefully on of
their skilled technicians will get back to me soon, otherwise this is
going right back to Newegg.







On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 12:19:04 -0400, kony <spam@spam.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 02:02:47 GMT, Chris
><ctstormhunter@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>What kind of "improvement" are you looking for over the
>>>video you already had? As GT mentioned, there's nothing
>>>particularly demanding about TV-Out, nor your described
>>>tasks, so we'd need to know where the current video is
>>>falling short. Your present PSU could indeed be a
>>>limitation, if you were just itching to replace something
>>>that might be a good area to focus on.
>>
>>
>>Well, at this point in time I don't have any real issues with the
>>current video card. I primarily was looking for the tv-out option.
>
>I must have been confused about your prior post as something
>made me read it as saying your present card did have TV-Out
>but with the upgrade you also wanted TV-Out and some "other"
>benefit.
>
>One of the problems is your PSU may have been merely
>adequate for the system as-is, many of the more powerful
>video cards use a significant amount of power but even a
>lower end card is going to use more power than the
>integrated video does. Since TV-Out isn't demanding you
>should choose a current generation, lowest end card from ATI
>or nVidia, unless you need something in particular like HDMI
>output (I assumed you wanted S-Video out for TV or ???).
>
>
>>However, if I was going to go through the trouble of upgrading to
>>begin with, I'd hope to make an improvement over what I already had.
>
>Besides the TV-Out, you don't mention anything that would
>make any particular level of card an improvement except that
>by using a separate card instead of integrated video (any
>card at all, even low end or very old) you relieve the
>system from devoting a certain amount (128MB) and bandwidth
>of system memory to the video, so the rest of the system
>would gain a slight (might not be enough to notice in most
>uses outside of gaming) performance boost, but for
>windows/2D mode, there is nothing demanding enough of the
>video itself to see much benefit.
>
>
>>I certainly wouldn't want degraded performance!
>
>It would be hard to find a modern video card that degraded
>performance below that of the integrated video, but the
>thing is that for 2D uses, the power of modern video cards
>in processing is mostly wasted, their mostly going to have
>gains in 3D gaming besides the other issue you are facing,
>more features like TV-Out but even cheap cards support that
>now.
>
>
>>Also, if I ever do
>>plan on purchasing a new computer, I may very well sell this one on
>>E-bay. So, upgrading to a "better" video card may add a bit more
>>value to the system.
>
>I doubt it, you would get very little if any return on this
>upgrade when it comes time to sell a used and aged system.
>If it were a pretty new system and had a relatively high end
>video card you might get 1/3rd to 2/3rd of the value of that
>card back out at resale time but even this is doubtful at
>auction, for used parts past the current generation. Video
>cards just depreciate too much, especially what you're
>wanting which is one power miserly enough that it might run
>from your marginal 250W PSU.
>
>
>>But, I also don't want to spend a lot of money
>>to do so.
>
>If you don't want to spend much then how could it be worth
>much adding to resale value of the system even in a perfect
>world? Your requirements aren't hard to meet, you might
>look around for some sale or rebate offers at your favorite
>online vendors. I would avoid ebay for something like this
>unless you feel like taking the risks, as video cards can
>often be partially damaged then resold on ebay (unless
>clearly claimed as new in box still).
>
>
>>So, as GT mentioned, it would be great to find a cheap
>>decent video card on E-bay that would do the job and not cost and arm
>>and a leg.
>
>I don't understand why you are having trouble finding one.
>I suggest going to newegg.com and using their search
>parameters on the left hand side of the page in the video
>card category to choose AGP (I'm assuming your board
>supports 4X/8X with the following link, if not backtrack and
>choose 2X/4X),
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...k=&srchInDesc=
>
>That's 121 hits, you should probably avoid the old FX5xxx
>series (like FX5200, FX5500, etc) merely because they tended
>to use more power, run slightly hotter. If you end up having
>to replace the PSU to support a card, it will practically
>double the cost.
>
>
>Here's a Radeon 9250 if you only needed composite TV out,
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121525
>
>here's a Radeon 9550 with an attractive after-rebate price,
>supporting S-Video and Composite TV-Out and at $23 after
>rebate I can't feel it worthwhile to use ebay at all.
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102458
>the heatsink on the following might be "slightly" better,
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131049
>though with any of these passively cooled cards I recommend
>that you leave the adjacent motherboard slot empty and leave
>that empty slot's rear case bracket cover off, which will
>cause more passive airflow over the card.
>
>If your case cooling is very bad, you might think about
>getting a card with a fan but that will increase noise
>levels a bit, and these fans tend to have fairly short
>lives, it might be a maintenance issue to replace it every
>year or two.
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814103162
>
>A reasonable alternative from nVidia might be one of their
>6200 series.
>
>If you're just itching to go with ebay instead, the best
>value would be something older. You just don't need a
>current generation card merely to support TV-Out, so long as
>you note the specs displayed with item listing you can
>discriminate them and the issue of it being slower at gaming
>won't matter since you make no mention of that being
>important. Too many cards over the years supported TV-Out
>to begin listing them all, it's not as though any one has
>enough merits you would ignore the others, since the whole
>point of a risk on ebay would seem to be trying for the
>cheapest thing possible, since as I linked above you can get
>brand new cards for under $30. One suggestion would be that
>in general if the card has a large heatsink with a fan, that
>means it's producing more heat during operation and as such,
>using more power from your PSU so again it could come closer
>or exceed capacity and you'd have to replace the PSU.