Building an HTPC - Which component to upgrade?

[tbcarey]

I recently started building an HTPC. The presents specs are as follows:

AMD 64 x2 4600+

MSI K8NGM2-FID (NForce 430 + GeForce 6150)

2 x 512mb Corsair VS PC2700

200GB Caviar SE WD2000JB 8mb 7200rpm (EIDE)

BenQ DW1640 DL (EIDE)

Realtek ALC880 7.1 HD Audio

Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1100

NMediaPC HTPC 100SA Case

It runs fine, but it doesn't seem as fast as I'd expect it to be for some reason. I notice that the onboard video seems to make the CPU usage in task manager spike to about 30-45% randomly while simply playing back video, which seems like a lot to me for one task with such a fast processor. I/O, is, of course, always one of the weakest links in the system too. I'm trying to figure out what to upgrade in it, and so far it seems like the two best things to upgrade would be the hard drive and the onboard video. I'm ONLY using this PC as a media center pc (absolutely no office or game use whatsoever; I have other pcs for that), so I don't need it to run fast during games or anything. I would like to eventually add another TV tuner, though, so I want it to be able to handle simultaneous recording and playback while doing other things in the media center as well. So, in everyone else's opinion, what should I upgrade? Which will make a bigger difference for a media center? (Again, not for gaming at all -- very little 3D, if any.)

1) Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000RPM 8mb (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144160)

2) MSI Radeon X1600Pro 256mb (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127201) -- has hardware H.264 decoding, which would be a big plus -- only GeForce 7800s can do it in hardware on Nvidia's side.

3) Something else other than either of those?

Any help is greatly appreciated! Please let me know why you think one over the other, though. Thanks in advance!

[Brandon]

Well probably the video card if i had to choose, although why does it matter if the CPU spikes while playing back video? It has to decode it since it is compressed which should still happen with the video card

Also, I wouldnt bother with a 10k RPM HDD, waste of money for a media center PC. I mean even 5400RPM would be fast enough for pretty much everything with a media center

[Japlabot]

The Graphics Card certainly, get something that doesn't use the processor to render Graphics/Video. At least an X300/6200. Disable the Onboard 6150.

I've heard a lot of hype about the Onboard 6150. By your report, sounds like I'll steer clear.

[tbcarey]

  Brandon said:

Well probably the video card if i had to choose, although why does it matter if the CPU spikes while playing back video? It has to decode it since it is compressed which should still happen with the video card

Well, it doesn't 'matter', it's just that I thought that seemed like a lot for playing back one xvid-encoded movie at a time. I'd like to be able to record and watch live TV simultaneously, and perhaps even record two shows and do something else with it at the same time (once I acquire a second tuner), as I said, so I don't want it to be incapable of doing that. I haven't been able to test that yet, obviously, so I don't know if it would push usage close to 100% or not, but it's possible at this rate.

  Quote

Also, I wouldnt bother with a 10k RPM HDD, waste of money for a media center PC. I mean even 5400RPM would be fast enough for pretty much everything with a media center

  Quick Reply said:

The Graphics Card certainly, get something that doesn't use the processor to render Graphics/Video. At least an X300/6200. Disable the Onboard 6150.

I've heard a lot of hype about the Onboard 6150. By your report, sounds like I'll steer clear.

Okay, thanks for both of your suggestions. The only reason I thought of the Raptor was so that I could put the OS on it and then not worry as much about swapping or anything while recording to the other disks (forgot to mention there are 2 external USB 2.0 hard drives hooked up to it too). I guess you're right, though, it won't make much difference.

As for the 6150, it's not bad at all -- I mean, it has loads of useful features built-in, especially with the MSI mobo (DVI, d-sub, component and s-video out, 7.1 HD audio, etc etc.) so those are useful, it's just perhaps I expected too much of it and thought it would transcend some of the limitations that have plagued previous onboard video solutions... high cpu usage, dropping frames in the background (which it tends to do if other windows are drawing to the screen -- i.e. tooltips flashing or windows being moved around), etc. Oh well. X1600Pro it is, I guess!

Thanks for the help once again! :)

[Brandon]

With the HDD, once the OS is loaded, there really isnt anything else to do with the HD except record. Ive seen some pretty decent HTPC performance at my local store on a laptop with a 5400RPM so id assume itd be similar

[Japlabot]

I was under the impression that you wanted to replace the Caviar SE with the Raptor, not complement. That is a good point (Accessing the OS's pagefile/Video Files) although I wouldn't think it would use that much CPU usage (it's really more work for the chipset itself). Run HDTach and see if there is any major bottleneck with the Hard Drive when playing a Video. If you do get a second Hard Drive for OS, it doesn't need to be a 10,000RPM Raptor, just get something cheaper like a 40GB 7200RPM drive.

[drshdw]

Maybe get some faster memory too? PC2700? :blink:

[Brandon]

  aznx said:

Maybe get some faster memory too? PC2700? :blink:

That wouldnt be a bottleneck in a HTPC. If he were doing extensive gaming or such i could see that being a holdback on *some* performance, but not much for his use. Not worth the dough

[tbcarey]

  Brandon said:

That wouldnt be a bottleneck in a HTPC. If he were doing extensive gaming or such i could see that being a holdback on *some* performance, but not much for his use. Not worth the dough

Yeah, exactly. I'm not going to OC the mem so it'd only make sense for me to go up to PC3200 on this board (Athlon x2's still only support DDR), and I can't see there being a huge performance leap from PC2700 to PC3200 for just OS boot times and recording/playing back video. The most used components in those cases seem to be the I/O (read/write data to hdd) and video.

[stncttr908 Veteran]

The 4600+ is the "odd man out" in the X2 lineup. The 4400+ has more cache, go for that instead.

[drshdw]

  stncttr908 said:

The 4600+ is the "odd man out" in the X2 lineup. The 4400+ has more cache, go for that instead.

I think he already built it. :p