PC mobo + processor upgrade advice

[stu123]

Hi,

I'm running a fairly old motherboard+processor and finding not surprisingly that 2 concurrent recordings or even sometimes 1 recording and 1 playback generate some noticable refresh/drawing/stutter issues so after failing to find anything on the support pages or a quick search I thought I'd just ask this forum...

I was hoping to add a 2nd drive (500-1000GB), change the mobo, proc and add/change memory carrying over as much as possible in add-in cards. Oh if it reduces power consumption then that would be good too.

Does anyone have any particular recommendations???

current machine:
P4S333 mobo (SiS645 chipset, PC2700, Socket 478, twin IDE-100)
Pentium 4 2GHz
1GB PC2700 memory
Haupauge Nova DT Dual DVB-T Tuner (PCI)
NVidia GeForce 6200 A-LE (PCI)
Videomate TVSAA 7130 (VCR capture on S-Video)
Firewire & Wireless ethernet (2xPCI)
500GB 7200rpm IDE Drive
DVD drive
This is housed in a mini-tower cab, the current mobo is ATX, PSU is 320W IIRC


Thanks
Stuart

[wannabepvr]

I can record three digital programs while watching another with a 2.0G E2180 core 2 duo (FSB800) I can also playback HD at ~1368x780, but not so well at 1920x1080. I am certainly down on graphics capability.

Don't aim too low or you will be disappointed. But you don't need all the bells and whistles either.

[Lindsay]

Multiple cores is a must. It makes all the difference when more than one job is being done at a time. I would go for an Intel Core 2 duo. The E8400 is pretty well priced (dual 3GHz). Plenty of mobo's to go with this.

The 8600GT 512MB is a cheap graphics card capable of hardware acceleration.

Have fun!

[bgowland]

I'm running a fairly old motherboard+processor and finding not surprisingly that 2 concurrent recordings or even sometimes 1 recording and 1 playback generate some noticable refresh/drawing/stutter issues

I'm surprised - my machine has a similar spec. to yours and I don't have problems with concurrent recordings.

I have a PVR-500 (dual analogue tuner) and 4x Nova-t PCI cards - it's rare that all six tuners are in action at the same time but it's fairly common for it to be recording 2 or 3 programmes at the same time as my wife is watching something on the MVP and I'm surfing the internet.

One possible difference is that my recording drive is a SATA 150 with a 16MB cache - even though it's several years old, it makes most PATA IDE drives look silly when it comes to read/write performance. Other issues could be software drivers or audio and video decoders.

If your mobo supports SATA then I'd personally try putting a SATA drive in for recording. If it doesn't improve things, you could always fit it to whatever new box you buy.

Also, make sure you've disabled 'on demand' anti-virus scanning on your recording drive and anything else that might interfere.

Cheers,
Brian

[HtV]

Also, make sure you've disabled 'on demand' anti-virus scanning on your recording drive and anything else that might interfere.

Cheers,
Brian

And don't forget to defrag from time to time. Hans

[fuzzweed]

Try uninstalling the ide channels, rebooting and letting them reinstall again. I can't remember what it's called but there's some windows parameter that starts at 5 and degrades to 0 over time that seriously sh1ts on hdd performance. This will reset it.

[fuzzweed]

Google 'reset dma' for more info...

[stu123]

Thanks
- checked DMA modes - all ok
- checked file and free space fragmentation - pretty bad
I'll add the extra disk, move things around and see what its like before pursuing the upgrade route.

Thanks for the pointers and comments.
Stuart