2008-07-29, 06:08 PM
I finally upgraded the HTPC, and all I can say is that I can't believe I tolerated my old system for so long, because it just is not expensive at all to get a really nice system now.
I was using an old MS-6385 motherboard harvested a Sony desktop using a Pentium 1.3 ghz with only 512mb of RAM. What spawned the upgrade was going on eBay to buy 2GB of Rambus RAM -- OUCH! It was going to cost me $400 for used chips! Yeah, Rambus memory was ahead of its time, but it was expensive then and even more expensive (and rare) now.
So I went shopping online, and ended up striking gold at CompUSA.com, upgrading basically everything except the hard drive and HTPC case for just a little over 1/2 what the Rambus upgrade would've cost me. No, I'm not exaggerating -- I couldn't believe the prices either!
So now I have a XFX MG-610i-7059 motherboard, Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2Ghz, EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 512MB PCIe graphics card, 2GB of RAM, new Lightscribe DVD Multi-Burner (SATA), and I'm still using my old 200GB hard drive and nMediaPC HTPC 100BA case and PSU. I also bought a really nice Socket 775 CPU fan. All that totaled to $220 after rebates (two of those were instant rebates/discounts), and this is now the fastest and most capable PC in my entire home.
The big non-GBPVR improvements were:
1. DVD playback directly to my Panasonic 42" plasma (outside of GBPVR) no longer stalls gets out of sync (that's why I was looking to upgrade the memory originally).
2. DVD conversions (for iPods/Palm PDAs/etc.) are just ridiculously fast now.
3. Burning a DVD is much faster now, too.
4. The DVI to HDMI from the HTPC to my plasma display works much better now. Before I couldn't see anything on the plasma display during the boot process until Windows loaded. Now I see the entire POST.
5. The EVGA card also handles HD resolution/adjustments better than my old Nvidia card did. The actual display is now truly edge to edge, whereas the old card couldn't do that.
6. The entire system actually runs cooler AND quieter now. Go figure -- more power, less heat, less noise. I'm expecting the Swedish Bikini Team to arrive any time now...
GBPVR Related Improvements:
1. Did Comskip run? Really? Well, then why isn't it showing up as running 15 minutes after the show ended? Yup, Comskip actually runs that fast now. Before it would actually take Comskip longer than the 1-hour show I recorded to figure out all the commercials -- now it's less than 15 minutes and that's even on a two-hour show!
2. Even though GBPVR was amazing before in that it could be recording on all three of my tuners, playing two other shows via my two MediaMVP devices, and even playing another show via the HTPC machine itself without much of a hitch, no it does all this without even so much as a blip on the CPU stats. Now the MVP's and the HTPC can even been playing Divx files and the machine still doesn't bog down.
3. Even the TV Guide updates faster due to faster parsing.
4. Guess who is finally running PVRX2 in VMR9 now? Finally.
GBPVR Issues:
1. I did have a sleep/wake problem, but read about MCE StandBy Tool in another thread here, and that solved my problems immediately.
2. My beloved Dscaler decoder isn't working very well with this new setup (double-image, jerky video), so I have to use the Cyberlink decoder instead. I'm still looking into the Dscaler thing.
3. Too damn many advance features to learn about now that I have the hardware to use them!
I'm sure there will be other improvements once I start playing around more with GBPVR features that I couldn't previously use. I'm looking at the DVD plug-in now, and in the near future I want to upgrade at least one of my three tuners to HD. I might have to upgrade my PSU for that though.
The WAF is high on this, believe it or not. I think she was getting a little tired of stalling DVDs and even GBPVR playback on the old system. I did get a bit of surprise in that I didn't realize that you have to reinstall Windows when you replace a motherboard. However, I learned that a repair install works just as well and then I don't have to reinstall everything. I may end up doing that anyway, just to make sure that everything's working as it should, but it only took me about 6 hours from the opening of the boxes to the final tweaking to get everything up and going. That even included a call to Microsoft since my Windows license freaked out over all the hardware changes. And the price was very right. My only regret was that I didn't buy two of everything so I could upgrade my office desktop as well. I think I might have difficulty getting that buy the wife in two separate transactions...haha.
Anyway, don't be afraid to upgrade -- it's really not that expensive, and it is definitely worth it if you can do it.
I was using an old MS-6385 motherboard harvested a Sony desktop using a Pentium 1.3 ghz with only 512mb of RAM. What spawned the upgrade was going on eBay to buy 2GB of Rambus RAM -- OUCH! It was going to cost me $400 for used chips! Yeah, Rambus memory was ahead of its time, but it was expensive then and even more expensive (and rare) now.
So I went shopping online, and ended up striking gold at CompUSA.com, upgrading basically everything except the hard drive and HTPC case for just a little over 1/2 what the Rambus upgrade would've cost me. No, I'm not exaggerating -- I couldn't believe the prices either!
So now I have a XFX MG-610i-7059 motherboard, Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2Ghz, EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 512MB PCIe graphics card, 2GB of RAM, new Lightscribe DVD Multi-Burner (SATA), and I'm still using my old 200GB hard drive and nMediaPC HTPC 100BA case and PSU. I also bought a really nice Socket 775 CPU fan. All that totaled to $220 after rebates (two of those were instant rebates/discounts), and this is now the fastest and most capable PC in my entire home.
The big non-GBPVR improvements were:
1. DVD playback directly to my Panasonic 42" plasma (outside of GBPVR) no longer stalls gets out of sync (that's why I was looking to upgrade the memory originally).
2. DVD conversions (for iPods/Palm PDAs/etc.) are just ridiculously fast now.
3. Burning a DVD is much faster now, too.
4. The DVI to HDMI from the HTPC to my plasma display works much better now. Before I couldn't see anything on the plasma display during the boot process until Windows loaded. Now I see the entire POST.
5. The EVGA card also handles HD resolution/adjustments better than my old Nvidia card did. The actual display is now truly edge to edge, whereas the old card couldn't do that.
6. The entire system actually runs cooler AND quieter now. Go figure -- more power, less heat, less noise. I'm expecting the Swedish Bikini Team to arrive any time now...
GBPVR Related Improvements:
1. Did Comskip run? Really? Well, then why isn't it showing up as running 15 minutes after the show ended? Yup, Comskip actually runs that fast now. Before it would actually take Comskip longer than the 1-hour show I recorded to figure out all the commercials -- now it's less than 15 minutes and that's even on a two-hour show!
2. Even though GBPVR was amazing before in that it could be recording on all three of my tuners, playing two other shows via my two MediaMVP devices, and even playing another show via the HTPC machine itself without much of a hitch, no it does all this without even so much as a blip on the CPU stats. Now the MVP's and the HTPC can even been playing Divx files and the machine still doesn't bog down.
3. Even the TV Guide updates faster due to faster parsing.
4. Guess who is finally running PVRX2 in VMR9 now? Finally.
GBPVR Issues:
1. I did have a sleep/wake problem, but read about MCE StandBy Tool in another thread here, and that solved my problems immediately.
2. My beloved Dscaler decoder isn't working very well with this new setup (double-image, jerky video), so I have to use the Cyberlink decoder instead. I'm still looking into the Dscaler thing.
3. Too damn many advance features to learn about now that I have the hardware to use them!
I'm sure there will be other improvements once I start playing around more with GBPVR features that I couldn't previously use. I'm looking at the DVD plug-in now, and in the near future I want to upgrade at least one of my three tuners to HD. I might have to upgrade my PSU for that though.
The WAF is high on this, believe it or not. I think she was getting a little tired of stalling DVDs and even GBPVR playback on the old system. I did get a bit of surprise in that I didn't realize that you have to reinstall Windows when you replace a motherboard. However, I learned that a repair install works just as well and then I don't have to reinstall everything. I may end up doing that anyway, just to make sure that everything's working as it should, but it only took me about 6 hours from the opening of the boxes to the final tweaking to get everything up and going. That even included a call to Microsoft since my Windows license freaked out over all the hardware changes. And the price was very right. My only regret was that I didn't buy two of everything so I could upgrade my office desktop as well. I think I might have difficulty getting that buy the wife in two separate transactions...haha.
Anyway, don't be afraid to upgrade -- it's really not that expensive, and it is definitely worth it if you can do it.
Chris
GBPVR system info intentionally left blank because I'm personally
insulted that you can't remember it from previous signatures.
GBPVR system info intentionally left blank because I'm personally
insulted that you can't remember it from previous signatures.
