[mythtv-users] OT: Help me upgrade my mythbox
Justin Luitjens
luitjens at cs.utah.edu
Sat Jan 20 02:56:31 UTC 2007
Hi,
I'm looking at upgrading my mythbox and am looking for advice on what to
get. I'll start out by describing my setup.
Motherboard: Asus A7v 133
Processor: AMD Thunderbird 1.2 ghz (underclocked to 1 ghz for stability
reasons)
Memory: 768 mb PC 133 ram.
Videocard: NVidia Geforce 2 Ultra
Capture cards: PVR-500 PVR-350
Hard Drives: 2 120 GB ATA drives for storage one 17 GB drive for OS.
Playing video causes my mythfrontend to take up about 60-70% of the CPU
and X takes up another 10-15%. This doesn't leave much room for
recording. When 2-3 shows are recording I cannot watch anything because
the CPU is pegged. Also when my machine is pegged it has a tendency to
hard lock with no errors. My birthday is coming up and my girlfriend is
willing to spend up to $200 on me. There isn't anything I want so i
figured i'd just have her get me something for the mythbox so we can
watch tv when recording multiple programs.
I think the best solution would be to upgrade the video card so I can
offload the decoding onto it. Upgrading the mobo/proc/ would also
require me to upgrade the ram and possibly more. Right now this isn't
an option. So I feel upgrading the video card would be the best
solution. Which video card would be the best in my situation? I could
get one of the nicer NVidia cards but would it have much effect or would
the CPU bottleneck it to much? Or would I be better off to get a
cheaper card and use the money elsewhere?
Thanks
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