... consider yourself lucky. A lot of boards have either an XGI chip... or a licensed Matrox G200 core. (NotMakingThatUp)

And yes the 9500GT-1x should still support VDPAU, at least with the latest/next driver. People use it on standard PCI 8400GT's.

The Quadro NVS290 has been available in 1x format for over a year. The NVS420 even has two GPUs on a 1x slot to drive 4 displays.

Nothing new here.

Can't remember the last time I heard the name Detonator but it does bring back fun memories of my rockin' GeForce 2 32MB with SD DRAM.

can it decode (h,264/MPEG-4/VC-1), under Linux via VDPAU? I don't need nor want a "Pixel Pusher". Those Days are behind me, I'll just get a Wii or another 360 for that chore. No what I need is a Cheep & Cheerful little 1x PCIe that, can run nVidias' VDPAU Video Acceleration Architecture under Linuxs' X11 Display System.

So can the Albatron 9500GT do that?

just to follow up:
not so sure about same bandwidth as
standard PCI.
PCIe x1 gen1 is ~ 250MB/s full duplex,
so 500MB/s when you're firing on all
cylinders.
standard PCI is 133MB/s, and you don't
get to double that for full duplex; you
also share that bandwidth with
everything else PCI on your mobo.

Cutting the PCI-E connector isn't all that bad, but considering that these 1x cards are going for $80-$100 and you can get a cheap 16x for at least a quarter of that, it's worth the investment.

Plus, if you look on Newegg, there are couple of Atom boards out there with a 1x slot. That's the way to go- 1x Nvidia cards + cheap Atom board = performance and low power.

You can use a regular x16 card in a x1 slot, provided you aren't afraid to cut away the end of the motherboard connector. It's been done by those Folding@Home cultists.

I'm still waiting for express card GPUs like Asus demonstrated a couple years ago.

taking into acount that has the same bandwidth as standard PCI.. maybe we could see somet like this in low/mid end laptops?