HVR-2200: Differences

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1gkar

722 posts

Ultimate Geek

#57431 13-Feb-2010 09:42

With my existing tuner card suspect, I decided to splash out on a new card, even if the old one was OK, then it would come in handy for the olympics.

Well, a couple of things you may not be aware of. I decided to install the card into my 3rd PCI-E slot, situated between the graphics card & southbridge chipset, only to find it wouldn't fit as the end of the card was catching on the RAM clips.

The old one fitted after I had changed the RAM modules to the 2nd channels (this put the 1st module one in from the left hand slots) & dropped the RAM clip down all the way.

I compared the two cards & the new one is about 10 millimetres longer. So, if you have a Silverstone case (mine is a Lascala 14 series) be aware. I now have only one useable PCI-E x1 slot, as the 2nd one is blocked by the graphics card fan

Also, the brilliant minds at Hauppuage decided to ship the card with an imcompatible drivers' CD. Sorry, but this comapny, whilst the products are very good, everything else they do is decidely 2nd-rate! (ask people the issues they had with 150MCE drivers, a few years back).

I ended up getting the correct drivers from here.

On the HTPC front, it appears all good. I reinstalled from a very ealry image (basically just chipset drivers installed) & things are working, especially with the SAF codecs which I had issues with in my original OS install.

Silverstone LC14 HTPC Case/Intel E4600 CPU/GA-EP35-DS3 MOBO/Asus EN9500GT graphics/2GB RAM/total 2TB HDD space/HVR-2200 & 2X 150MCE tuner cards/LG GGC-H20L BD Drive/MCE2005/Mediaportal/TVServer 1.1.0Final/LG 55"3D LED-TV/Denon AVR-1803 receiver/X1 projector

askelon

872 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#298581 13-Feb-2010 10:09

I bought one of these yesterday (white box version).. Had it all up and running in my MediaPortal comp very quickly - didnt notice the length of the card, fitted in my system fine. Installed the drivers from the CD.. Also fitted an WinTV-HVR1300 into a customers new Win7 comp yesterday and the CD that came with it worked perfect as well.. Maybe you managed to get an old disk with yours or something?

mm1352000

1149 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#298643 13-Feb-2010 15:04

Yeah motherboard selection is pretty important! I've had a similar problem to 1gkar except I have an Asus p5w dh deluxe mobo. My main PCIex16 slot drops down to x8 if I use the other (physical) x16 one. In order to avoid that you have to use one of the remaining x1 slots. One of these is below the main x16 slot and gets covered by double slot graphics cards. The other is above the main x16 slot (and directly below the northbridge) and can't be used for long cards like my TV card because the memory slot clips get in the way! You have to compromise and either use a single slot graphics card or only have your graphics card operate at x8...

1gkar

722 posts

Ultimate Geek

#298711 13-Feb-2010 19:04

It has been a known issue in Aussie, as well. it was posted on the main MCE site which is where I got the info originally, as it was a site I used when I had MCE running before MediaPortal days.

borgia

101 posts

Master Geek

#299721 17-Feb-2010 11:30

Having your graphics slot operate at x8 is no big deal (there is plenty of bandwidth there) for all but the top-end "dual chip on a card" monster graphics card. Not many have those in a HTPC.

ivan

mm1352000

1149 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#299739 17-Feb-2010 12:35

@borgia
I'm running an HD4670 and my PCIe is version 1 rather than version 2 (which has double the bandwidth) so I really thought it would make a difference. I haven't done the benchmarking myself, but reading articles like http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/p55-crossfire-nf200,review-31800.html?xtmc=fix_p55&xtcr=1 seems to suggest that even 8x PCIe version 2 slots can be saturated when running multi-card setups. It doesn't seem so much of a stretch that 8x version 1 slots could be saturated by a single modern card. What do you think?

PANiCnz

986 posts

Ultimate Geek

#299746 17-Feb-2010 13:05

If all your video card is doing is processing HD video then its unlikely to make a difference, however if you game on your HTPC then a full 16x v1 slot would be preferable. It also depends on the video chipset, anything other than high end is also unlikely to notice an 8x slot as the GPU isn't fast enough to utilize all the bandwidth.