[mythtv-users] Upgrade to HDTV from SDTV Question, 1.5 year old system

Bob Sully rcs at malibyte.net
Sun Jan 21 18:15:46 UTC 2007


David Krainess wrote:

<snip>

> I was thinking of buying a HD-5500 card
> and adding it to the PVR250 on my existing system.
>
> So....
>
> 1.) Will the Venice 3000 work or,
> 2.) Should I upgrade to a more powerful 939 socket processor, or,
> 3.) Will I have to upgrade the whole darn thing.
>
> I thought I read back when I bought it you need 3ghz to run HDTV.
> UnTechnically, the Venice was marketed a comparable to a 3ghz Intel,
> cough, at that time.  However the marketing numbers and reality are
> somewhat confusing.  More so am I confused by the ghz number today not
> meaning as much as efficient processor design, instructions per second,
> multi cores,  and 45 nanoblah die size yada yada yada

I have a socket 754 "3400+" (2.4GHz), "minimally" overclocked (a few
percent), with 2G RAM and an nVidia 6200 series video card.  I'm doing HD
with it at 1280x720 (720p), and it works pretty well; I see occasional
"prebuffering pauses" but they're not really noticeable.  Top says I'm
using anywhere from 25-40% of the CPU on playback.  I did have to use make
sure I did all of the tweaks possible with the proprietary nVidia driver
to get it to play 720p HD content cleanly.  I haven't tried it at 1080i
yet (the small text and interlacing are unacceptable when using it as a
computer rather than a DVR),  and my TV won't do 1080p.

Short answer:  It may be OK depending on your video card and supporting
configuration, but you're on the edge.

> Also, do you need CPU cycles for recording or playing of HD (with the
> HD-5500)?  I keep reading mixed information on this.

Playback.

> Any help greatly appreciated.

HTH
Bob

-- 
________________________________________
Bob Sully - Simi Valley, California, USA
http://www.malibyte.net
http://www.malibyte.com



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list