[mythtv-users] OT: Help me upgrade my mythbox

[Justin Luitjens]

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