Hi,

I'm planning to purchase a new pc, to replace my Celeron 400mhz one. I want suggestions for,a Video Card & a sound card , to be able to watch a movie headache-free in mplayer (sounds like a dream).

Which one is the best for my requirements. Keep in mind, I'm not into gaming, so I don't require a killer card.

Also, if it is of any help, I'll be going for a P4 (1.8 GHZ), 500z RAM (or 1 GB).


Would appreciate any advice as I'm bordering on ignorance when it comes to hardware....

Regards, Ahsan

I would recommend the sound blaster audigy. Great cards and the older one's can be picked up for cheap.

As for vga I have a radeon 9700 pro, but drivers and everything can be a real headache. While I've never had one, everyone seems to enjoy the NVidia cards. Although I will say this for the Radeon, its never given me problems watching movies. In fact one of my favorite things to do is to run xine in the root window (a movie plays as your wallpaper). It's just with games... for example Quake III runs awesome, but winex is only now beginning to support the fglrx ATI drivers (the drivers need some work).

My only suggestion would be sure to get a video card that will do digital out (in case you decide to get a flat panel) and S-Video out (for piping to the tv).

I like the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card best, followed by the SBLive.

For an el-cheapo video card, I have had good luck with the 8MB Savage IX AGP Video Card going for around $12 now. The only fault is that my tv tuner card full screen view isn't full screen on it whereas on my nVidia card (needs a driver installed) it is.