To upgrade or not?

[Joony]

Greetings all,

My ole HTPC could finally use some more power for Vista and power to decode h264 HD files.

Current setup:

Athlon 64 Venice 3000+
MSI RS480M2-IL mATX 939 mobo
1.5GB PC3200 DDR Memory
ATI Radeon X850 PCI-E

Based on the Vista Experience rating for the CPU, I get a subscore of 3.7.

Upgrading to a Conroe setup would be nice, but pricey, with the CPU alone costing 150 + cost of DDR2 memory, and a new motherboard, ugh!

According to newegg, I could pick up a Athlon X2 Toledo 4200+ for $87. It seems like a big jump to go dual core and a faster processor numbers wise, but would it really be a big jump, performance wise? Where i'm getting my bang for my buck rather than throwing away money in an old platform?

 

[robmurphy]

Check the newegg CPU, and make sure its an S939 CPU. S939 CPUs cost much more that AM2 ones.

You can get faster single core CPUs for S939. I had a machine with an Athlon 3800+ and that was an improvement over the Athlon 3200 in another machine of very similar spec. A popular choice at the moment are the S939 Opterons as they seem easier to get hold of than the S939 X2s.

If you want the h264 video decode check if the X850 supports it, and if not then have a look to see which of the more modern card support it. A word of warning though. HP machines used a similar motherboard and that would only work with ATI grapics cards. See:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfr...c=en&docname=c00361515

A quick check of the MSI site specs for your motherboard show that it has only been tested with ATI cards. Have a look at the FAQ and test results on this page. The FAQ does say no Nvidia graphics cards.

http://global.msi.com.tw/index...cat2_no=&cat3_no=#menu.

Rob.

 

[Capitalizt]

How bout a fresh reformat? That usually speeds things up quite nicely.

Reinstall Windows.

Download all windows updates.

Download updated video/sound card drivers.

Disable the Windows services you don't need running constantly (windows update, system restore, indexing service, windows time, etc) -- do a Google search for "Black Viper" for a lots of good info on this.

Finally, turn off all visual effects except for font smoothing (you don't really need the others anyway.) If you do things right, you'll save LOTS of wasted processor power and several hundred MB in RAM.

There you go...

A blazing fast "like-new" computer for $0.00

 

[google01103]

look at the for sale/trade forums and buy something used and cheap.

consider oc'ing, thought the bios doesn't seem to support it there are various windows tools that will help

if there's no real reason for an x2 (and you don't oc) you should get better results with a single core price/performance wise

 

[BurnItDwn]

Most encoders and decoders will use 2 cores. Also, since HTPC's often record and play at the same time, or encode and decode at the same time, a dual core would be really smart for said HTPC.

Grab a socket 939 x2 on a comparable Opteron and it will breath some new life into your HTPC. Otherwise, your next step up is Conroe, and while conroe CPU prices have dropped quite a bit, buying a new mobo and ram is guaranteed to be pricey.

 

[Joony]

Realistically, I don't really do much encoding. I download a lot of television actually

I will be using the HTPC to do a bit of gaming on my 42" Westinghouse 1080p LCD, and playing x264 encoded HD files (packaged in .mkv format), which both take up a lot of CPU power. However, i'm not sure if current GPU acceleration supports the kind of h264 files that I download, from what i'm reading, it's for the HD-DVD or BluRay movies on PC.

So my question is, maybe i'm better off with a higher end single core at my price range of ~$100.

Some of you are saying to go Opteron, but from what I'm seeing at newegg, a majority seem to be the Denmark series, which are dual core. But I do see the Venus ones which are single core.

Any specific recommendations, anyone?

edit:

I did 15 minutes of research, hmm, I kinda wish I had a board that OCed. These Opteron puppies seem to have a lot of potential, oh well.

I will probably end up going for the X2 Toledo 4200+ at $87!