New mainboards vs. video and sound card upgrade (1 Viewer)

D

dm15644

Guest
Hello,

I want to have better pictue quality when watching SD TV and DVD. Also I want to digitize my vinyl records and have a resolution of at least 24 bits. Both is not supported by my current system - hence an upgrade is required.

My current system specs:

- Asus M2A-VM
- AMD Athlon X2 3800+ EE
- Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500
- 3 GB RAM
- MS Vista Home Premium SP1
- Silverstone TJ08
- Video projector Sanyo PLV-Z5 connected via DVI to HDMI
- Sound projector Yamaha YSP-4000, connected via SPDIF

Important to me are:

- Reliability and a nicely working system
- Simplicity, I don't want to fiddle with the system every day
- Noise; power consumption as such is not a target, but of course low power consumption means less dissipated heat and less noise at the end of the day.

Now, there's two possiblities for the upgrade:

1. New board with GeForce 8200 or AMD 780G, e.g. ASUS M3N78-VM or similar.
2. Add a video card, e.g. ASUS EN9400GT SILENT/HTP/512M, and a simple sound card for recording, e.g. Creative X-Fi Platinum or EMU 0404

The diference in cost will not be massive, so that's not a criterium. My current considerations are a bit different.

With the new board, I can toss in a new 4580e which will give more power. Or I can do it at a later stage. Also, everything is integrated and clean. I like that. Last not least HDMI out allows a cleaner setup of the AV chain.

On the other hand, with a new board I need to give up my current configuration which I tuned a lot and which works excellent now (apart from the two items mentioned above).

Looking at the second aproach of adding new cards, this will maybe not degrade system stability. What it will do is making the system more compliacted (I take a simple system is more easily kept stable). There is also a potential that highter power consumption will affect the heat load to an extent that I need to make changes to the current fan setup, which I want to avoid.

I'm uncertain how to proceed. Maybe I missed something? Any comments are welcome.

Thanks,

jayrock
 

drealit

Portal Pro
March 15, 2008
190
17
I suggest you refer to my response in another thread here: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/hardware-selection-help-62/htpc-build-advice-55110/#post380969 I don't cover the audio portions that you are asking about but I recommend going with something other than Creative. There's much better companies out there that specialize in what you're after with better results. Creative is just a "brand name" to me at this point... not necessarily boasting the quality of the past.

But the alternatives I listed for video/audio playback will be the best you could ask for with current hardware (especially when we're talking about SD playback). My exact current system is listed in my profile and it works fantastically. My friend built a similar system from the ground up for $333 with a slight difference in hardware - 5050e processor,HD 4650 video card, 1Tb hard drive, and a NSK2480 enclosure... this was last week.
 
D

dm15644

Guest
drealit, thanks for your response. The referenced article is very interesting.

/jayrock
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom