[mythtv-users] System upgrade - £150 ( £200 ) to spend

[Mark Greenwood]

I'm actually running a similar system with a slightly faster Athlon (1.8GHz) - it handles 2 tuners with ease but does struggle with Live TV when it's recording off the other one. And mythfilldatabase or transcoding grinds it to a virtual halt. If you stick with your motherboard I'd definitely suggest a RAM upgrade - to at least a Gigabyte. You might also want to try a faster graphics card (although I suspect your motherboard only has AGP and not PCI-Express, which will severely limit your choices). Have you definitely installed the 'restricted' NVIDIA driver? Ubuntu/Mythbuntu should have a control panel somewhere to do this for you. 

If you go for a new motherboard then you might as well go for a new processor too - as a faster one will definitely give you more performance, and I'd go for an Intel since they use less power and consequently run cooler (which means less noise, always good in the living room). Most small motherboards still have IDE on them these days, it's only top-end gamer systems that tend to come with no IDE.

I've recently got back into building PCs after a long time off, like you, and as someone here mentioned you can build a pretty nice system from overclockers.co.uk if you're prepared to do the research. It's not realy that hard though, everything's much the same as it was really, there's just a few more choices now.

Mark

On Sunday 08 June 2008 21:53:41 Johnny Russ wrote:
> > Reason for upgrade:
> > Computer can't cope with the latest version of Ubuntu and I want to
> > stick with Ubuntu/Mythbuntu to provide me with an easy(ish) path to
> > keeping up to date with MythTV.
> >
> >  If you are only doing SD then your current setup is much more than capable
> of doing that. Also there is no particular reason why Ubuntu 8.04 shouldn't
> work with your setup. If you are upgrading because of problems with Ubuntu,
> but you don't want to do a clean install of the OS, then upgrading your
> hardware is more likely to cause problems than to fix them. It would
> probably by most helpful to explain what you mean by "can't cope". Then
> people could help you get up an running again with your current setup.
> Mythbuntu is one of the most popular choices and between here or the Ubuntu
> forums you will almost always find the info you need to get Mythtbuntu
> going. If you just want to upgrade to new hardware for the heck of it then I
> am sure you can get help for that too, but it doesn't seem to be the answer
> to your problems as described.
>