Processor Upgrade Advice?

[zed]

I have a Dell 1100 box with a 2.53GHz Celeron and 1G of DDR400 memory in it. It seems to run GB-PVR pretty well altho I don't do any conversions with it, just record and playback. It can be upgraded to a 3.0GHz P4 HT. Any thoughts on whether that would be a worthwhile upgrade? My understanding is that the Celeron runs the bus at 533 MHZ where the P4 runs it at 800. Then there's also the HT capability. FWIW. I can get a P4 for about $100US. I'm trying to decide if it'd be worth it.

Any thoughts/comments/advice will be appreciated.

Thanks...

[Jep4444]

Dell 1100 won't take anything with a FSB above 533 so you're probably out of luck, also remember it'd have to eb socket 478

[zed]

Dell 1100 won't take anything with a FSB above 533 so you're probably out of luck, also remember it'd have to eb socket 478

Yes it does...here are the specs...

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/sy...#wp1076752

There was a thread on the Dell Forums about it. Several people had done it. It's a drop-in replacement. Some said it made a big difference while others said they didn't notice much difference. I'd imagine it depends on the app and memory speed, etc.

I'm trying to get a feel for how much difference, if any, it would make for GB-PVR. I guess I don't understand how the Celeron and the P4 differ (except for cache and that the P4 costs several times as much).

I have an HP box with the P4 HT in it...I guess I could swap the processors and see what it does...

[Jep4444]

hmm i though the 1100s still used the Intel 845 chipsets, must of been the first budget one to use the 865

[wtg]

If you aren't using the box for anything other than gbpvr and you aren't doing conversions of any kind (AVI playback on MVP, transcoding to AVI for archiving, etc), I don't see how you'll notice much difference with the P4. Gbpvr itself just doesn't require very much of a box for basic recording and playback.

If you aren't getting smooth or high-quality playback, spend the $100 bucks on a decent video card that does MPEG decoding in hardware. This will give you more return on your dollar than the CPU upgrade, and several decent cards fall within this price range.

If you aren't having any playback issues at all, I'd spend the $100 on another hard drive because that's the one thing I can't seem to get enough of.

[zed]

...If you aren't having any playback issues at all, I'd spend the $100 on another hard drive because that's the one thing I can't seem to get enough of.

I hear ya...I picked up the Dell because it was a smoking deal that I couldn't resist and I wanted another box to dink with. I've been running GB-PVR on my 'big' HP box and have about 750G of disk on it, mostly full of recordings (many of which I'll probably never watch :o ). I've been running the HP as a server and watching the stuff with a couple of MVP boxes. I just recently connected the Dell to our 55" TV (SD) just to see how it would work and am pleasantly surprised at the results. Unfortunately, it has only three PCI slots, one of which now has a tuner and another has an FX5200 card that's driving the TV. The box is relatively small and quiet enough not to bother my sharp-eared wife and the TV PQ is really pretty decent. However, I don't think I can upgrade it much but that may not be necessary anyway. I'm thinking about transitioning from the HP to the Dell if it'll do what I need and so far it seems to be doing fine as-is. For now, I think I'll hold off on the CPU upgrade...maybe get a nice wireless keyboard/mouse instead...I have my eye on a Logitech MX3000...

Thanks to all for the inputs...