Video Cards

So the the options here are:

1. Use the on-board Video
2. Buy an add-on PCIe card

The motherboard we're going with for the 6 Core CPU is GA-M68M-S2P. The on-board video card is the NVIDIA GeForce 7025. Because the best RAM for an AMD CPU is DDR2 800, it's not a problem that the max for this board is 1066. But because of the AM2/3 limitations, 1066 and higer only runs single DIMM per channel. However, the biggest gripe with this board is it only has 2 DIMM bays and maxes out at 8 GB. There's another board that has 4 bays and maxes out at 16 GB, but still suffers from the same limitations because of the CPU.

Dong some more research, it seems best for us to put in another PCIe card for better gaming and multi media experience. We've decided to go with the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD4350 with 1 GB of RAM. Reading some reviews on this card, people are having no problems playing some intense games and watching Blu-ray and streaming HD videos.

Now, to make this a true multi media computer, it surely needs a video capture card. This took a lot research and going back and forth between the ATI and Hauppauge cards. Reading reviews and because of what's included with it, we're going to go with the HauppaugeWinTV-HVR-2250. It seems to work well and has an included breakout cable to use w/ set-top boxes that are needed for digital cable and satellite and to also capture from a camera or VCR. It is also a true dual tuner card, meaning you can record a tv show at the same time you're watching it. The dual tuner card from ATI we looked at was the ATI TV Wonder™ 650 PCIe combo card. However, it's not a true dual tuner card where you can watch a show and record another one at the same time. The Hauppauge does have this capability.