Graphics Card/Onboard Graphics for Media Centre PC

Hello there. It arrived today. I installed it, connected the s-video to s-video cable from the computer to the tv and got nothing. I tried another lead I have, s-video to scart. That worked during the post screens of Linux (operating system I already have installed) booting up (picture quality was quite bad).

When the computer loaded up the desktop, the TV had strange blocks of colour. I tried adjusting the screen resolution to the smallest I could and the lowest refresh rate, but unfortunately that didn't make a difference.

Hello there, it seems your suspicions were correct. I have Windows 7 running nicely. Picture quality is fairly poor. Big improvement on before, but normal text is impossible to read. I think there is a problem with the TV too, as the picture isn't square, it is warped in the left and right corners.

Windows 7 was able to automatically work out what resolution and refresh rate to use to display on the CRT TV.

I've got the TV running alongside a standard LCD pc monitor at the moment, but the idea is to do away with the monitor. At the moment I have both displaying the same thing.

I am still looking out for any flat screen crt tv's with a screen size of 26" or greater (to match or supersede what we have already) on freecycle. I wonder how much difference this would make.

biggles1000 said:

is it warped in th corners because of the curve of the screen? (or it working out there may be a curve and being wrong). Yeah, the problem with CRTs is that, well, they're CRTs :P There are some pretty awesome CRT TVs in existence, but because of the imprecision, you'll never get one as crisp as an LCD TV :/
another problem could be because the only possible connection between a CRT TV and a PC is s-video, which isn't too great :/
would've been nice if some companies had stuck around and continued improving the 'old' style of television :)

I don't know why it is warped. It is a flat screen CRT TV, so there shouldn't be any problems like this...

Hello again. Thank you for your continued help!

Another TV might have better connectivity options too!

Damn, I give up. I am going out to see if this LCD TV is available today: Samsung LE32C530 | 32 inch LCD TV 1080p HD Ready Freeview | Richer Sounds

I suppose my next questoni,which Grahics Card should I get now which will allow me to play the games I want such as Sims 3, Rollercaster Tycoon, Total War series (full detail) at a reasonable price. I still want the usual monitor connection output, but no longer need s-video and can go for something which HDMI out instead.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Also, at present I have Corsair TwinX 2GB DDR2 6400 C4 (2GB of RAM overall). Would you suggest I upgrade for improved gmeplay and watching media? If yes, please recommend a few possibilities.

Motherboard details for RAM:
Dual-channel memory architecture
4 x 240-pin DIMM slots support unbuffered ECC and non-ECC DDR2 1066/800/667/533MHz memory modules
Supports up to 8GB system memory
Due to AMD+ CPU limitation, only one DDR2 1066 DIMM is supported per channel. When four DDR2 1066 DIMMs are installed, all DIMMs run at 800MHz frequency by default for system stability.

I am running Windows 7 Professional Edition (32 bit) and AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 5050e.