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#1
Advice on basic video card with S-Video out
I have an old Radeon 7000 video card. I used it to extend my desktop (to a monitor in my living room where I can watch videos more comfortably) on my XP machine. The machine died and I now have a Windows 7 machine. My Radeon 7000 video card is pretty useless with it. I lost the Radeon CD and I spent several hours yesterday reading excellent posts here about old video cards, drivers, and how they sometimes can be made to work with Windows 7. For whatever reason (mostly my own limited brain) I can't get this ancient card to work on the new machine (it sends a driver-less signal out the S-Video but completely bypasses my main computer screen now -- I just use the VGA out for my computer monitor sitting next to my computer). I've pulled out the Radeon and am back to a single screen for now.
I don't do gaming via the S-Video out, just viewing of FLVs and other computer-compatible video formats. The S-Video out (and the sound card out) goes to a DVD recorder and thus to my TV in my living room. I don't need to convert native formats, I just play (and sometimes DVD record) them as is. I have a mouse at the living room TV and the extended desktop (on the TV) is "off to the right" of my regular computer monitor desktop. Things I drag off to the right of the main monitor show up on the TV and I play them on my TV when I'm in there, rather than at my computer desk in my study. This setup worked great with my old XP machine.
What basic video card might support my needs now that I have to use Windows 7? I have room for a PCI card, a 1x PCI-E card, and one 16x PCI-E card. Would prefer to use the built-in power supply (my machine uses a NVIDIA nForce MCP61P chipset -- the machine is a cheap Compaq CQ5300F). Probably a basic PCI card might be best for me.
Thanks in advance!
-- vertex11