[mythtv-users] hardware upgrade advice

Brian blistmail at comcast.net
Sat May 5 17:01:44 UTC 2007


>	Asus A8N-Deluxe MB (VIA chipset)
>	Athlon 64 3400+
>	1 Gig RAM
>	GeForce 5600 video card 
>	ATA HD with root and OS installed
>	SATA HD's for recordings/videos
>
>	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. 

Possibly the VIA chipset? I dunno. I can only share my recent experience. I
ran HD successfully on an Asus A8N-VM with an Athlon 64 4000 CPU and a very
slow 5400rpm 120Gb HDD scaling to fit a 1280x1024 screen without XvMC. Not
sure if the 1280x1024 screen taxes the box any more or less. I did not test
this outputting to my HDTV. HD content was seemless while using an Athlon 64
3200 as well. (same m/b) 

This was Fedora Core 6 with the 9755 nVidia driver. I just followed Jared's
guide and it worked like a charm. I set the system up to briefly test
Firewire recording for a proof of concept. I had problems with Firewire
(Motorola DCT-3416) and I'm waiting for my cable company to drop a DCT-6200
off for testing.

So I think it's possible to do HD with the processor you have. eBay has used
Asus A8Ns and A8N-VMs for under $40 IIRC. 

-Brian 



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