System upgrade - What to do, what to do?

[Big Stan]

Well, it's been a couple weeks and I thought I would give an update for anyone else it a similar situation.

I pretty much followed the advice of the gurus above and upgraded the Mobo, CPU etc. I am not a super geek (geek maybe, just not super ) so this was a bit of an adventure for me. In the past I have installed the additional memory chip and PCI card but that about it. All in all things went well.

Old system was a P3 833Mhz, less then 512MB of PC133 ram, MX4000 video, 120GB 7200RPM seagate drive, PVR150. Bought a network card and a soundblaster to complete the package for $40. Worked good. Not great but good.

To start the oddessy I went to NewEgg and bought myself a Biostar motherboard (K8NHA), AMD Sempron 64 2600+, 512MB of DDR400 ram for $164. Stuff arrived one day later!!!

Diassembled the old system and installed the new Mobo. Went to hook up the power supply and dicovered what a ATX12V power supply was and the fact that I did not have one. Back to CompUSA who was having a Xmas sale and got one for $19.

Back home, put it all togeather and had trouble getting windows to load. Found some posts that the Bios needs to be flashed (slowly becoming a super geek here) and handled that. Loaded GBPVR (thanks Sub) and a couple of plug-ins. Hooked it back up to the living room SDTV last night and gave it a spin.

What a difference!!! Screens load in a flash, picture quality is much better (it wasn't bad before but you could tell the difference between PVR and the TV tuner), remote responds like a remote should.

Now I am as cheap as anyone on this forum but I must agree with Sub that nothing beats horsepower. The cost to upgrade was $183. If I had done it from the begining I could have saved the $40 for the soundcard and NIC as it was included in the new motherboard so my outlay would have been $143. Money well spent for the picture quality and wife acceptance factor.

Anyway, here ends my happy tale (at least for now, on to media MVP), but I wanted to pass this along for anyone else using a throw away for a system. Spend a little money and I think that you will be happily suprised.

And to all a goodnight.

[Big Stan]

If you brought the RAM on New Egg how come you didn't go for the Kingston Value Ram Double Channel 2x512MB = 1GB sells for $79 to $89. What type of video card are you using you didn't say or are you using the MX 4000 8X AGP you had before? If so you can overclock that to 275MHz Engine Core and Memory Core 400MHz.

I am like you but instead I kept my old P4 2.4GHz and use it for something else and just go a new MOBO MSI described below, AMD 64 same you have the Ram well I have the AMD 64 2800+ also in another system I've built along with the one below. Cases are cheap well no name brands work just as good as those expensive ones from Antec without the price factor.

As I wrote above, I am as cheap as (if not cheaper then) anyone else on this forum. The ram decision came down to $$$. I got 512mb of Viking for $37. I didn't think that extra ram would make a performance difference.

I know this is a bit of sacrilege on this site but for some reason I have in the back of my mind that a Tivo with lifetime subscription cost about $350. My goal has always been to have a superior system (and GBPVR is certainly that) for the same or less money. In addition to the above expense, I also spent $24 on the 120GB Seagate drive (great deal from CC) and $55 the MX4000 (not a great deal from Walmart). To date I am up to about $280. That will leave me enough for a second PVR150 and a fat $10 bill to show off to my TIVO friends. Again, no need to sell me on GBPVR. I know it is a much superior system. I have already added My music, My pictures, Weather, Comskip...etc all stuff that TIVO can't touch.

Tipster, you mentioned overclocking the MX4000. Is there a performance advantage for that when driving SDTV? I would think that the basic clock rate would handle SDTV with room to spare. Not true?

You also mentioned overclocking the CPU which I havent played with yet. Again the CPU seems to be coasting with one PVR150. May need to do something when the MVPs show up someday (santa clause is coming to town).

[Big Stan]

Yeah you can overclock the MX4000, to 275 Engine Core only Memory should be at 400MHz.

IS there any reason to overclock the video card? The only thing I use it for is GB-PVR.

[merscwog]

I notice that for this Semperon/MSI MOBO combo, that pvr150's are being used. Has anyone tried this combo with a pvr500?

-merscwog

[nitrogen_widget]

I've got that semp proc along with the biostar MB combo in my wish list on new egg. Also some corsair value select 512mb ram. I can add another 512 later. And a lite-on DVD burner for good measure.
This way I can actually use my primary system instead of waiting for it to finish burning a DVD or encoding a file.
It’s gotta be faster than the 750mhz test system I built.

I’ll probably order it tomorrow if I don’t find anything cheaper because I have all of next week off while the wife has to work so I can spend a few days tinkering without her asking me if I’m going to spend all night on my computer.

Ya know, you’d think it had breasts the way she acts when I spend more than an hour on it.