I recently upgraded my display to a Gateway 24" with HDMI inputs. It a 1920x1200 display with 1080p. My system is an AMD Athalon XP 2800 with 2 gigs ram. Current video card is a NVIDIA GForce 4 w/ 64 megs ram. I don't do any gaming on this machine but do run Autocad and open plans in .pdf form that can be as much as 300 megs.

So any suggestions on a video card with an HDMI output that will drive this beast?

Thank You,
Tony

Have you looked at the HD series from ATI? they do HDMI as well as Audio Signal over HDMI

2600PRO AGP
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161210
Be perfect for your system, under $100 can run that Resolution and has HDMI, be perfect for AutoCad with its 120 SPs

*edit* Gah! Xazax310 beat me to it. >_<

I'm guessing your current card uses analog outputs... If you had DVI, you can use a DVI -> HDMI converter. I'm not sure... but if you wanted to get really ghetto, you may be able to use a VGA -> DVI converter and then attach a DVI -> HDMI converter on top of that.

Is your graphics card AGP or PCI? If it's AGP, you can try this out: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102709

Just toss on an HDMI adapter and you should be good to go.

Your first suggestion wont work Rgeist, As he has only a Geforce 4, and the 64mb wont be enough to power that resolution also the Geforce doesnt support HDMI so his screen probably be all funny looking. Much better off getting a newer GFX Card

I'm not looking to save money and use converters. I just want something that will work and work well. I definately want HDMI outputs.

The 2600's series comes with converters just so you know, it comes with a DVI-HDMI right out of the box no need to buy it, as for HDMI cards, they are very hard to come by and alot more expensive and i dont think they make any for the AGP bus, you would have more luck with PCI-E but i doubt AGP

As example here is a X1650PRO with Native HDMI, however its PCI-E
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814129076

Im sorry to say i dont believe there is a Native HDMI video card on the AGP bus, but the DVI-HDMI coventer works just as well

Xazax310 That looks good to me. Do all the video cards require an adapter to use an HDMI cable. I see they all seem to have "Dual Link DVI" ports but no HDMI port.

Is there any disadvantage to getting off the AGP Bus? Forgime my ignorance.

Like what i posted above, few cards have Native HDMI, all come with DVI or VGA, however the DVI converters work just as well as if you it was Native HDMI, and your chances of finding a "cheap" native HDMI AGP bus are extremely rare

Also i edited the GFX from the original one, it is now the AGP HIS 2600PRO no the Sapphire one, upon reading reviews of BSOD's doesnt sound like the kind of card you want but the HIS seems ok.

Thats quite an old system you got there haha, im using a XP 3200+ right now 1.5GB DDR400 and X1300PRO...

Also just a little sidenote, ATI is perfect for what your doing as the 2600 series can decode dvd's and use less CPU, so its good choice for an older computer but in the end all up to you.

There are no disadvantages only advantages, it just that your computer currently only use AGP bus. so your stuck with it unless you buy a brand new computer

If your interested i just happen to be building an Intel computer, purely for sale, the Mobo has an ATI X1250 integrated GFX card that supports DVI Natively, here ill show you the mobo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813127023

PM me if your interested and maybe we can talk.

AGP is old hat these days, PCI-E is the new and better graphics slot. I would recommend getting a totally new system with a cheap dual core and PCI-E graphics card as it will help massively when opening your 300mb files. Should increase your productivity by a significant amount as you won't be waiting around for ages anymore!

IMO if you stick with AGP get the largest memory you can get because shunting resources to memory on AGP would be painful in comparison, for PCIe should you have large models then using the Hypermemory sharing system memory is much less painful and not as much of an issue for Autocad versus a game, but still I think get as large as you can for that class of card. The HD2600 is a solid choice, but even an HD2400 would be fine, however I think the limited vertex power of an X1250 or 1300/1400 model may leave you wanting, the X1600 would probably be OK, but likely still sluggish compared to even an HD2400 for your needs.

The other thing is everything lower than the X1600XT is limited to 1 dual-link DVI connection, and then for the X1600XT and above you need to see support per model. If you're at all considering adding another panel similar to the one you have, that should be considered. The X1650XT and X1950Pro both have 2 dual-link DVI connections, IMO just get the HD2K series and you're guaranteed the dual-link DVI and HDMI support you're looking for.

Also, IMO, get at least a 512MB AGP card, if you go PCIe you might be OK for 256MB, but yours is a rare case where memory size will matter more than getting an extra 50mhz out of the VRAM or core.

Thanks, that was a concern of mine, but I wasn't sure how high of a 2D res 64MB of GRAM would support. Learned something new, I suppose.

So do I have a PCIe slot? You guys kind of lost me there with all the talk of "painful comparison" and "vertex power" I can't get a new machine, it was all I could do to get the boss to spring for a new graphics card. If there's a sure fire solution in AGP then

I doubt you've got a PCI-e slot. At least one that will fit a graphics card. You may have a little short PCIex1 slot or something, but other than that, you'd need a new motherboard with a proper PCIe x16 slot.

Any card that can support your monitirs resolution and has DVI to HDMI adapter will work. 95% of cards today. In my situation I need a true HDMI card because my monitor is a 42" HDTV LCD and I want Video and Audio through the HDMI. If you dont need audio to your monitor the adapters are all you need. ATI 3450 might suit you just fine.

the only video card with a built-in HDMI output (to my knowledge anyway) is the XFX GeForce 7600GS HDMI. Unfortunately it's a pci-e exclusive though.

I think that will be hard to find if not at all a graphics card that can do video and audio together sense graphics cards are just that for displaying information. HDMI is just DVI with audio included. one thing you could try to find is a mobo with integrated HDMI port that comes with sound integrated as well but the downside to that is you won't be able to play many games with integrated audio