I'm sorry to make another H/W post, but I'm a little confused about what could be causing my problem. This is my current setup:<br><br>Asus A8N-Deluxe MB (VIA chipset)<br>Athlon 64 3400+<br>1 Gig RAM<br>GeForce 5600 video card
<br>ATA HD with root and OS installed<br>SATA HD's for recordings/videos<br><br>My box works awesome for everything except HD. I have XvMC working and my CPU generally hovers around 60% when watching a 1080i channel. It plays smooth most of the time, but still seems to stutter every once in a while. Once it starts stuttering it gets bad for a few minutes, then generally goes away. Sometimes if I stop and restart the recording (or live TV) it will get better. From what I've seen, it seems like my 3400 *should* be enough to handle HD without XvMC, but run better with it. It stutters horribly without it, and some with it, so I'm thinking that is my problem. However, I've seen people have problems with the VIA chipset also. FWIW, I can't use the VIA XvMC setting in TV > Playback, it stutters worse than without XvMC, but Standard XvMC works OK.
<br><br>Here are my question(s): Could it be something in my install causing the problem? or the way I have XvMC set up? In other words, should my CPU be enough to handle HD if properly set up? Or could it be the VIA chipset causing issues? Or maybe because I was an idiot during initial install and put my OS on a PATA drive with recordings on SATA? I have a little bit of extra money right now so I'm willing to do a small upgrade to get the HD working smooth. I've been looking at an Athlon 64 X2 4200 on newegg for about $120 that would fit in my current motherboard (socket 939). Or is it likely I will still have the same problems because of configuration or other hardware problems? I don't have enough money right now to go with a new MB to get rid of the VIA chipset because I would end up getting a new CPU and video card to fit current MB's with PCIe. But if that is my best option, I will just live with it for now until I can afford a full upgrade.
<br><br>Hopefully I haven't completely lost you and someone can lend some advice.<br><br>Thanks,<br>Ryan<br>