<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/26/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Craig Huff</b> <<a href="mailto:huffcslists@gmail.com">huffcslists@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">It seems my disk drive was the victim, not the perpetrator. I rebuilt my FE<br>with MythDora on another disk drive and it started crashing again (screen
<br>corruption and subsequent system lockups).<br><br>I had to send back my FE motherboard for a warranty replacement, so I'll <br>be watching shows on the 17" vga monitor until it gets back, unless...<br><br>Dr. Frankenstein (me) got the bright idea that I have an old Gigabyte
<br>GA7-DX motherboard with an Athlon 2600 cpu, a mini-tower case and <br>a spare power supply (with a noisy fan) laying around. I thought I'd put<br>them all together with 512MB of PC2100 ram and a "retired, but working"
<br>10GB Quantum PATA drive and the original Nvidia 2MX AGP 4x video <br>card with S-Video support.<br><br>I got it all working and loaded MythDora 4 using the DVD drive from the <br>"brainless" FE system using the default partitioning. But...
<br><br>When I go into the recordings listing, it takes an interminable time to <br>respond to the next command, even from the keyboard I still have <br>attached. I noticed that the preview for the currently selected recording
<br>doesn't show and if I try to watch the recordings, I get a black screen <br>for something like 30 - 60 seconds (maybe more) and then I'm back in the<br>recordings menu.<br><br>So, is my supposition correct that, while the rest of the system is probably
<br>ok for watching SD over S-Video, I need to get a newer video card? If so, <br>I'm thinking I should go for a PCI card rather than an AGP card, for future <br>flexibility. Is a PCI GeForce FX 5200 with 128MB good enough? Should I
<br>go up to a 256MB GeForce 6200?<br><br>OT1H, I may just keep my $$ and wait for the motherboard (or more likely <br>its replacement) to come back from the surgeon and OTOH, I kinda like the<br>idea of having another FE.
<br><br>What do you folks advise, as far as whether the AGP card is inadequate to <br>the task and if so, why the 5200 or the 6200 is the better replacement? <br><span class="sg"><br>Craig.<br></span><br>_______________________________________________
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<div>If you're asking whether a regular PCI card is better than an AGP card, it's the other way around. AGP is better than PCI (until you get to PCI-Express/PCI-E). Here's a wiki on PCI-e: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci-express">
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci-express</a></div>
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<div>Realistically a 5200 or a 6200 is powerful enough for HD assuming your computer has enough horsepower. The 5200 will also be able to do colored XvMC OSD as well as an added benefit.</div>
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<div>If you're not getting the preview and it's taking a while to get the scan of the videos, then I think you've got something else going on on your backend. I had this problem when my backend had lost it's link to the remote drive where I store videos...
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<div>Sean</div>