Worth upgrading any of my 4 year old HTPC setup?

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mcraenz

1140 posts

Uber Geek

#663108 27-Jul-2012 20:52

davidcole:
geekiegeek:
mcraenz: As for the seek speed, consider doing a nightly defrag on you recording disk. Id say GPU might worth looking at. I'm going to move my HTPC out of the lounge and run a long HDMI cable. That way I can have a full tower and not worry about noise. Because it seems impossible to find a card which is lowprofile, silent (no fan) and has tuns of video processing power. This is especially important for the 1080i content from freeview HD and sky.

Why have a video card at all, just go Intel ivy-bridge. Handles 1080i freeview fine.

My latest build is an ivy-bridge i5 (an i3 would also do) with stock cooler and an HVR 2200 capture card. That's it. just the CPU fan (on silent mode) and the power supply fan - whole thing is near silent. For quick channel change I use an SSD for OS and time-shift with a HDD for recording - everything else sits on a server under the house.

Same with the AMD A8 (and I'm assuming the A6 and A4 as well since the video GPU is the same) - but I understand your hesitancy regarding AMD, but I have no issues at all, and no GPU fan.

Imo there's handling and then there's handling. My 9400GT handles 1080i but it could be better in some scenes. and I've recently purchased a high-end Panasonic plasma and feel like the GPU is now the weakest linK. Also like the idea of having less stuff in the lounge.

But yeah I found the nightly scheduled defrag helped seek times in mediaportal.

Do people find the SSD for os makes a big difference?

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Asmodeus

1015 posts

Uber Geek

#663150 28-Jul-2012 00:35

Definitely recommend SSD for the OS and programs. I have a 1TB HDD for all things TV related and other HDDs for my media library. OS and software runs on a 64GB SSD which is always over half empty. As well as being faster, lighter, smaller cooler and quieter it doesn't need a drive bay so more room for storage drives or just cold air in your case. Mine is stuck to the inside wall of my case with adhesive velcro dots :)

browned

636 posts

Ultimate Geek

#665178 1-Aug-2012 09:28

SSD for OS is the best single upgrade you can do for any PC, even a PC with low ram. Every PC I use has an SSD for the OS from my work laptop, home laptop, and media center.

I have even modified the TempRec directory so that goes to my media center SSD OS drive. This helps with live pause and forward/back skipping of time shifted content.

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blur

384 posts

Ultimate Geek

#665181 1-Aug-2012 09:30

browned: SSD for OS is the best single upgrade you can do for any PC, even a PC with low ram. Every PC I use has an SSD for the OS from my work laptop, home laptop, and media center.

I have even modified the TempRec directory so that goes to my media center SSD OS drive. This helps with live pause and forward/back skipping of time shifted content.

+1 to that!

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kiwiNZL

14 posts

Geek

#670086 9-Aug-2012 14:32

I actually have a very similar issue (4 year old HTPC). I hope you do not mind that I hijack your thread!! :)

I have an old HTPC that's main job up until now has been play 720p media files, which it does flawlessly. At one point I had TV 2 720p freeview working, but my 780g chipset is simply not powerful enough to handle freeview now at 1080i.

I'm going to try to get freeview working again on the system, but as it is so old I'm not certain what is the cheapest solution with this setup?

Here are my specs:

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+ 780G Chipset,
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ CPU
Corsair 2GB Value Select DDR2 667
NOVA T 500 dvb-t

I am thinking that just upgrading the video card would be enough? I quick glance has some people recommending a Geforce 210? Something similar to this:

http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/components/video-cards/pciexpress/auction-501828550.htm

Will this make my four year old HTPC run freeview like a champ?

The only problem I ever experienced with the system is that the CPU seemed to be overheating at one point a few years ago, so I underclocked to keep it cooler - now it runs fine again.

davidcole

6034 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#670098 9-Aug-2012 14:40

kiwiNZL: I actually have a very similar issue (4 year old HTPC). I hope you do not mind that I hijack your thread!! :)

I have an old HTPC that's main job up until now has been play 720p media files, which it does flawlessly. At one point I had TV 2 720p freeview working, but my 780g chipset is simply not powerful enough to handle freeview now at 1080i.

I'm going to try to get freeview working again on the system, but as it is so old I'm not certain what is the cheapest solution with this setup?

Here are my specs:

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+ 780G Chipset,
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ CPU
Corsair 2GB Value Select DDR2 667
NOVA T 500 dvb-t

I am thinking that just upgrading the video card would be enough? I quick glance has some people recommending a Geforce 210? Something similar to this:

http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/components/video-cards/pciexpress/auction-501828550.htm

Will this make my four year old HTPC run freeview like a champ?

The only problem I ever experienced with the system is that the CPU seemed to be overheating at one point a few years ago, so I underclocked to keep it cooler - now it runs fine again.

I remember a few people had problems with the 780G chipsets when they came out, and the generaly solution was a GPU upgrade.

I've not kept up with the GPU models any more to be of much help. Of the "old school" model numbers it was an 8500GT or 9400GT and above. What that translates to for the current models (of nvidia I assume you;'re after) I don't know.

I run a AMD 6550 GPU - embedded in my A8 CPU. Is fine for Freeview

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kiwijunglist

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#670128 9-Aug-2012 15:22

kiwiNZL:
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+ 780G Chipset,
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ CPU
Corsair 2GB Value Select DDR2 667
NOVA T 500 dvb-t

Yup with GPU upgrade should play DVB-T Freeview HD 1080i fine. I'd recommend you stick with current motherboard + cpu and buy a 2nd hand gfx card from trademe for ~$50. eg. HD4350 HD4670 HD5450 AMD 9400 AMD 9600 AMD 9800

It's actually possible to play 1080i with that setup if you overclock the HT speed and the GPU core, but I'd recommend a cheap gfx card vs overclocking, as even with overclocking the HT speed it's very borderline.

The problem with the 780G was that if you didn't use a phenom cpu, the HT speed for accessing the shared memory wasn't fast enough for 1080i DXVA.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

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kiwijunglist

2981 posts

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#670141 9-Aug-2012 15:33

EDIT: Actually u can get a new HD5450 for $55 or HD6450 for $70

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

martyyn

1971 posts

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#670415 10-Aug-2012 09:41

Ive used CoreAVC with a 780g for a number of years now with no problems at all playing 1080 or even bluray for that matter. 20% CPU on the four cores at maximum too.

kiwijunglist

2981 posts

Uber Geek

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#670471 10-Aug-2012 10:31

that's using software decoding, and he has a dual core 4800. bluray 1080P is a different ballpark to DVB-T 1080i.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

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