I have 2 older video cards i want to use on a pc that I plan on using as a PVR with mythtv.
I am not sure if a pci (NOT pci express) card -ati radon 7000 w/ 64 megs ram
is the better choice over an AGP 32 meg Nvidia tnt 64 card.
Clearly the AGP is faster than PCI
Not sure if the tradeoff in speed on the pci card is made up with the 32 meg AGP card

Thanks for any input...

It's probably a coin toss, but as a general rule I'd go with whichever card is the most powerful, ie, has the most RAM. You are correct that AGP has a faster transfer rate than PCI, but when it comes to video cards, what really matters is how fast the card can render the image. My bet would always be on the card with the most RAM

Both cards are old and the support is limited. nVidia stopped supporting TNT cards and ATI only support from 8500 and to the latest. If you want to output the video to the TV, it is best to use a recent card. You could buy a nVidia GeForce6 6200 and use OpenGL to accelerate the video playback of MPEG-1/2 and other video codecs.

Very rarely that more video memory will increase video performance. In order to get good video playback, higher throughput is better. The AGP card will be a better choice for that. When dealing with 3D rendering, both video memory capacity and throughput is better.

64megs of video ram will have NO performance benefit over 32megs of video ram--not for playback of videos. Use the AGP card, because its higher bandwidth will allow playback of higher resolution and/or frame rates.

The Radeon 7000 is fully supported by the open-source Xorg "radeon" driver. Are you getting paid by someone to spread FUD against non-vendor, non-proprietary X drivers? You're the same poster who was trying to persuade someone else (incorrectly) that the open-source driver didn't accelerate 3D on a 9200.

Alex Jackson, you are too paranoid that proprietary software will literally effect the Linux experience. This is not true because I use nVidia's proprietary software and the reliability and stability is very, very good. Yes, Xorg software does support some ATI cards, but 3D rendering is experimental. 3D rendering support for ATI cards gets worst for each increasing model. I have an ATI Radeon 64 VIVO (one of the 7000 series) card that I have not yet test. It should work for some 3D applications, but I may have trouble with other applications that require an OpenGL command that DRI does not support. Also I may have trouble doing video capturing. Hopefully, Google Summer 2007 code provides better support for each ATI and Nouveau, an reversed engineered project for nVidia cards.

I have used OpenGL to help accelerate video clip playback with only with mplayer which MythTV uses. It increases my computer's speed by about 20% to 30% (guesstimate). I could not playback Quicktime trailers that are encoded in 720p with out OpenGL to accelerate video files. With it, my computer can play it with out loosing frames. Also other video formats plays a lot smoother.

The reason I am pushing to buying a more recent card is to take advantage of OpenGL newest capabilities to accelerate video playback. Older cards do not have this. It has nothing to do who is paying me. No one is paying me.

Well, I had a Radeon 7000 and I HAVE tested it with the open source drivers--it worked great. I used it with various 3d screensavers and a couple 3d accelerated games.