Choice of CPU , Mobo and OS (1 Viewer)

ColinT

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I have been working with MP for about a year now, with a 1.8G Athlon and NVidia 7600GS card with Vista and would like to upgrade my system. It seems that single core is not enough even if you have Hw acceleration.

My current system Is too noisy, occasionally freezes, has jitters and cant cope with HD, so it looks as though I am going to have to build almost completely afresh, though I would like to re-use some of the TV cards I have invested in and have space for DVBS2 card when I need it. I dont think I can get away with less than 3 PCI slots so it looks like I cant go mATX.

I dont want to skimp, but equally dont want to spend more without reason.

I want a single seat which is dedicated to MP, at least 1080i HD over HDMi (cos that what my TV accepts). I would like to put sound down the HDMi, but also already have a 5:1 surround sound system

Questions are:
1 Intel or AMD CPU (or this purely a religious matter)?
2 Do I gain anything by going more than 2 cores and should I go for the faster or cheaper/cooler ones?
3 I am likely to go for graphics on the mobo and am thinking about the Nvidia 8300 - or should I go the AMD graphics route.
4 XP or Vista?


Any thought and/or mobo recomendations welcome.

Regards Colin
 

ryan20021982

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  • June 27, 2008
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    1 Intel or AMD CPU (or this purely a religious matter)?
    I like AMD, use to be intel until I started building my own pc's and compared speeds with prices
    So now I only use AMD

    2 Do I gain anything by going more than 2 cores and should I go for the faster or cheaper/cooler ones?
    Some dual cores are only 45watts now so look around, I like the AMD 4850e 2.5ghz dual core 45w

    3 I am likely to go for graphics on the mobo and am thinking about the Nvidia 8300 - or should I go the AMD graphics route.
    If you go with the 8300 you spend alot more than using AMD with onboard Nvidia 8200 which will play
    everything I have ever tried all the way to 1080p HD


    4 XP or Vista?
    I still like XP but thats mostly because I know it good and dont want to change and media portal works
    perfect with it and dont have to worry about compatibility issues with XP


    Any thought and/or mobo recomendations welcome.

    I would recommend this if you go AMD
    Code:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138113
     

    gloomyandy

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    Hi,
    So just to confuse you a little...

    CPU: I used to use AMD but form my updated system I switched to Intel, I seem to have spent less time messing with cpu related updates since then, but probably no real difference.

    Cores: I would say dual is fine, unless you go with one of the integrated AMD graphics boards in which case apparently having a quad core, unlocks some extra features in the graphics chipset that seem to make a difference for HD processing.

    Graphics: I choose the ATI route and have used a separate card. I'm really happy I did. I get very good hardware acceleration of SD and HD and very low (less than 10% cpu usage). I actually changed my graphics card to a higher spec one after a few weeks and as a result got better acceleration and a quieter cooler system!

    OS: I used to use XP but with my new build went to Vista. I wish i had done this earlier. It has been so easy, no messing around trying to get non official system updates that don't want to stay in place, and the system just works. If you go ATI graphics you may find that some of the latest features only work on Vista. I would stick with Vista 32 (Oops my original post said 64!) because of some driver issues.

    Motherboard: Hard to say... But a couple of things you may want to check.... I managed to get a mATX card with 2 PCI slots which I'm currently using, I would rather have had more, but the cases for ATX cards just seemed too big (I started with ATX and just couldn't live with the huge case). I have my graphics card in a PCIE slot, take care with the size of heatsinks they may block the PCI slots... I also have a spare PCIE slot, so I have some (but probably limited expansion options). Having said that though I currently have two DVB-T tuners plus a DVB-S/S2 tuner which has been more enough so far.

    Good luck!

    Andy
     

    gloomyandy

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    Oops,
    Ray you are of course correct! That will teach me to type things so early in the morning! I've fixed my original post... Yes it should be Vista 32, not 64....

    Thanks

    Andy
     

    pilehave

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    I got the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H running with a 4850e and XP Pro as OS.
    This is pretty much an easy setup if you stick With Catalyst 8.8 drivers.
    Running for about 3 weeks on a 120W PSU.

    What slots do you need for your tuners? PCI, PCI-X(I noticed that you wrote PCI, but could the optional DVB-S2 perhaps be a PCI-X?

    I don't see a reason to go with the ressource-hogging Vista when all you need is a basic OS with as little memory-usage as possible.
     

    damaster

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    Here's an awesome budget build that can handle all 720p/1080p HD content easily:
    - CPU = AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Unlocked
    - Mobo = Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
    - OS = Vista x86

    The motherboard's on-board GPU is powerful enough to do hardware acceleration of all 720p/1080p HD content. The unlocked 5000+ CPU can easily be overclocked to 2.9GHz from it's stock 2.6GHz by simply increasing the multiplier and still runs very cool.

    One of the hard lessons I've learned while building a few HTPCs is that a powerful, expensive, and hot CPU is actually more detrimental since it generates a lot heat and thus potentially more noise (unless you liquid-cool). A good GPU and proper set-up to do hardware acceleration, with a cool and not-so-powerful CPU is much better for video playback needs.

    If you want to do encoding of videos, then of course I would have to recommend a quad-core.
     

    wonkyd

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    I'm current using Vista 32 and am going back to XP. The reason being my onboard 8200 supports hardware decoding h.264 but in vista that only works using EVR which is still problematic with media portal. In XP the acceleration is supported in VRM9.
     

    gloomyandy

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    Interesting I have a hd3650 and use evr all of the time, the only problem I see (and not very often), is the flickering of the menus when I use non full screen TV. But since I pretty much never use that it's not a problem for me... What problems did you see with evr?

    Andy
     

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