Building an HTPC, got the choice of G400max or G450!

[LemonJelly]

Ive started putting together one of those htpc pc's with spares i have floating around! I put in a radeon 7000 dual display card thinking it would be really good (been told they were the best)

anyway! our tv doesnt seem to like it much, anything to do with dos or the bios screen makes the picture roll and go black n white once into windows xp its fine (after much fiddling)
so anything to do with re-installing will always mean i have to fart around getting a monitor out

I picked up a g400max and a g450, both have the output leads. ive been told i could make these cards assume the tv is the main display straight from dos! is it just a case of tweaking the bios on these cards to do so?

[Kruzin]

You can do this with G400, but not G450.
There is an easy BIOS option to enable DOS TVout on G400.
Just download the latest BIOS from Matrox, and the flash utility will have the option when you run it.

G400 also has much better TVout that G450, as G400 has an external maven, whereas it's internal (and not as good) on the G450.

Set up the G400 with a monitor as primary, and TV as secondary. Get everything working as you want, then you can power down, disconnect the monitor and leave the TV on the secondary as the only display.