[mythtv-users] Re: Components for my MythBox! :)

[Paul.Buchanan at thomson.com]

On Thursday, December 30, 2004 9:43 AM, mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
wrote: 
> one other question for everyone.
> i will be using a pvr-250 as my capture card and the onboard tv out
> (s-video) on the motherboard (Chaintech 7NIF2 with nForce2 chipset).
> i'm planning on going with an athlon XP proc, but what speed should i
> get?  this box is going to be a dedicated MythBox (FE/BE until i get
> my xBox set up as a frontend).  i'm only going to be viewing/capturing
> NTSC cable.  i know the pvr-250 does all the encoding for me so i
> don't need much power there.  eventually i plan on adding a couple
> other capture cards (pvr-250's or pvr-500 when supported), but i'm not
> sure how much more power is needed to support multiple capture cards.
> prices on the procs available for this board range from ~$70 - ~$210.
> that's a range of 1.8GHz to 3.3GHz over three different cores
> (Thorton, Thoroughbred, Barton).
> any thoughts?
> 
> thanks
> andy
> 

The only processor-intensive tasks that you will have are decoding the mpeg2 streams, and the commercial flagging threads.  Keep in mind that if you are going to be doing any compiliing of source, faster procs will speed this up.  I have a celeron 2.0ghz in a frontend/backend combo, and it is overpowered.  So, you should be able to get away with the cheepest CPU.

Paul