Boosting performance with Hauppage HVR 1600

[DavidB]

Hi,

Thanks everyone for your initial suggestions on my other thread asking for what card to get.

I picked up a Hauppage HVR 1600 and installed it in a Dell 4600 system which has a 2.4 GHZ P4 CPU and a Radeon 9600 graphics card. It works ok alot of the time but sometimes it stutters, particularly if the video content has a lot of panning in it.

I'm wondering what is the best strategy to get some more performance out of this system -- or if I'm just kidding myself, and this PC needs to go to the junk heap. Here are my options, I'd appreciate you thoughts on what approach would work best.

1.) Upgrade the ram which is currently 750MB to 1.5 or 2.5 GB. (How much does gbpvr really want to see?)
2.) Upgrade the hard drive (presently the original IDE drive, to a SATA model -- bigger and faster)
3.) Install an inexpensive SATA 2 card - about $20 on ebay, to get to 3 mbps transfer rate.
4.) Replace the Radeon 9600 with something newer/faster (what card has good price/performance & fits an AGP slot?)

Is it possible with a two-drive system to have gbpvr put the video on the "D" drive and just leave the OS and app on the "C" drive? Would that provide better performance?

Basically, I don't know if the system is CPU-bound or Disk-bound or RAM-bound. However, when look at the CPU usage chart, it's pretty much staying in the range of 25 - 40% so that suggests that the CPU is not the problem.

Any suggestions are most welcome. Thanks in advance.

[pBS]

new video card would probably make the stutter go away completely..ati cards can be found for agp still..[get hd3600 or better]
a gig of ram should be fine, 2 drives will help but not much... i have my c for os only, a partition for gbpvr only, another partition for livetv buffer, and separate drive for recordings plus others..
separate partitions keeps things from getting fragmented..
but that 9600 i the weak link overall...

[DavidB]

VisionTek ATI Radeon HD 3650 1GB AGP?

http://www.visiontek.com/index.php?page=...&Itemid=71

[pBS]

yep, that's the one... you'll need at least a 250watt psu but it should do well even with blurays..
there are also hdmi adapters to give it hdmi w/audio...[usually sold separately]
[the middle round plug is for svideo and component]
get latest drivers for sure tho...on ati site look for latest 'agp hotfix' driver for this card...

personally, i'd stay away from agp cards as they can act very odd..[not like same pcie card] but the latest agp drivers seem to be very nice so far..
i'm typing this on a agp hd3650 also.. tho i'll be scrapping this for a nice intel pcie system soon..

p.s. what os? what decoders?
i'd use ffdshow decoders with XP vmr9 if using pvrx2, or win7 and a bit more ram and same codecs with npvr..
npvr works best with vista/win7

[mikeh49]

+1 on pBS. I'd add a recommendation for Windows 7 with EVR renderer and, based on my experience, the Microsoft DTV-DVD video decoder (at least if you're on PVRX2). With Seven, you can set the video and audio decoders in GBPVR config to "System Default" and let Windows figure out how to play the video. Again, this is for US mpeg recordings. ffdshow gives you many more options, just too many for me. If you're on NPVR, I don't know.

If you're on XP, you could try VMR9 FSE renderer. It could do HD most of the time when I was using a 9600Pro, but has some features that make it inconvenient sometimes.

[DavidB]

Thanks. I'm on windows XP SP3 I will order that card, increase the RAM and then try the different decoders.

My PC has a 250W powersupply but with the graphics card and the hauppage card, maybe I need a bigger power supply? I think I will just try it with what I have and see if it can handle it.

[pBS]

i think it'll do the trick..i've used same on a 200w before..
the video card does require a power connector of it's own..
[but only uses around 36watts]