Are there any chipsets to avoid

[zaphod_beeblebrox]

I am looking at a very cheap box to take my winfast dtv2000h ....in years gone past there were certain chipsets that caused heartache for video capture ... is this the case now?... a local supplier has Sempron 3000+ everything onboard machines with 80gig drives 18x burner 6chanel sound 512 ddr $310 Australian or a 4.3gig Pentium all the same specs except 1 gig ram for $380 Aus... which is awful cheap .. and would do for what i need ... but won't be goin there if the chipset is crap for video capture...

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well you didn't tell us what chipset the systems have :) Probably some SiS or Via on the AMD, and probably an Intel 915 or 845 on the P4

Both CPUs are capable, and I assume you mean a 3 GHz Pentium 4. I would go for the P4, as it has more RAM, and a P4 is certainly faster than a 3000+ Sempron IIRC.

Both should be fine... The dtv2000h is (im guessing) a DVB tuner? So all the computer should have to do is capture the stream out of the air, which uses like no resources whatsoever :) Crunching down these DVB captures on the other hand can be demanding.

~MiSfit

[zaphod_beeblebrox]

Well you didn't tell us what chipset the systems have :) Probably some SiS or Via on the AMD, and probably an Intel 915 or 845 on the P4

Both CPUs are capable, and I assume you mean a 3 GHz Pentium 4. I would go for the P4, as it has more RAM, and a P4 is certainly faster than a 3000+ Sempron IIRC.

Both should be fine... The dtv2000h is (im guessing) a DVB tuner? So all the computer should have to do is capture the stream out of the air, which uses like no resources whatsoever :) Crunching down these DVB captures on the other hand can be demanding.

~MiSfit
I don't know what chipset ... these guys selling this stuff are impossible on the phone .. so I hope to be armed with knowledge before rocking up .. the stuff I posted is all that is mentioned in the add apart from the power supply specs..

the add says Intel Pentium 4.3Ghz not 3Ghz... but as you say .. it's probably 3gig... these guys have woeful english

the dvt2000h will not run reliably capturing mpeg2 in my aging xp2600 @ 1900 .. I've been using a Winfast PVR2000 for years now ... and can only speak highly of its ability to capture excellent quality through its hardware encoding ... but has no digital free to air ability ... the dvt2000 h does .... and is great with the digital free to air ... the line in quality through cvbs or s-video is woeful on the dvt2000 h .... so I want a second machine to run the dvt2000 h .. so if theres no dogdy chipsets when it comes to video capture... (and I abhor sis... nothing but woeful crap) .. I'll buy one of those rigs just to capture digital free to air

[FishTank]

well there are no 4.3ghz pentiums, so it pobably means P4 - 3ghz.
oh and afaik a sempron is like a celeron.

if you're looking at intel cpu's, then do get an intel chipset (not nforce!!).
id stay away from VIA as much as possible, but since im not to familiar
with amd chipsets, ill leave that to others.

edit: just to add why id suggest intel chipsets over nforce.
they perform about the same, but the nforce gets warmer, so
in my opinion, intels design is better, ergo buy those. :)

[zaphod_beeblebrox]

Went down and got the 3gig p4 ... it's a via driven mobo (Gigabyte GA-VM9000M) and a gig of ddr2 for $230 aus.. put that in a desktop case from the stack in the garage ... setup a new shelf in the entertainment unit and away it has gone .. works well with the dvt2000 h even displayed and captured HD TV without frame loss before I enabled hardware acceleration ...used a 40 gig drive as the primary and a 80 as the capture drive .. what else could I ask for .. BTW .. Via was the first chipset in an AMD based system that I had built and started to use for video capture 3 years ago when I first got into it ...the unit was a few yrs old when I installed the pvr card ... and it never gave me problems till the mobo gave up from old age and me fiddling with it regular...

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yeah... older VIA chipsets were a really mixed bag. I had DREADFUL experiences with a KT100, and AWESOME experiences with a KT133A.

~MiSfit

[halsboss]

be very careful of cheaper CPUs ... they're cheaper for a reason ... Celerons, for example, are missing a bunch of multimedia specific instructions... I'd guess that for semperons too

[dade49]

I built an HD-HTPC with Blu-ray and HD-DVD drives. I used an Asus M2A-VM HDMI mobo with an AMD X2 4800+ and 4GB of DDR2-667 Mhz memory. This mobo has the new AMD 690G chipset, and completely sucks. I honestly thought the board was defective, so I had it replaced. It was not the board. It's the chipset.

The onboard video chipset has a native HDMI out, which was the whole reason I bought it. It runs on a Radeon X1250 chipset. It cannot play 1080p video without loosing frames. Video was choppy, and audio was not synced because the video chip could not render the image fast enough.

Even more frustrating is the SATA chipset. They're calling it an AMD chipset, but it's a Promise rebranded. Look for WebPAM software. Drivers for Vista never worked. After using the XP drivers in Vista, it would take 15 mins or so to boot. Would just hang while loading.

As far as I can tell, any AMD 690 chipset is so new, that it's not ready for primetime. I was extremely disappointed. I returned the board.

I bought an ASUS M2NPV-VM (nForce chipset) plus a Geforce 7600GT with HDMI out and a SPDIF connector on the video card to accomplish the same result. It is awesome, works like a champ.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Celerons, for example, are missing a bunch of multimedia specific instructions... I'd guess that for semperons too


Simply not true.

Budget CPUs like the Celeron / Sempron are generally slower overall, yes, but that's not because they don't impliment any specific instruction, like SSE3 etc...

AFAIK, the latest Sempron and Celeron processors all have SSE3, but maybe not SSSE3 etc..

What they're lacking is multicore support, lots of cache, etc..

Plus, their architectures generally have lower instructions per clock overall when compared to mainstream Athlon64 X2, and Core 2 Duo processors.

The budget chips these days are the cheapest AMD Athlon 64 X2s, and the Pentium D. All dual core, all pretty slow compared to more beefy stuff.. :) The Celerons and Semprons are only if you're REALLY cheap, and cant spend an extra $20 on a CPU.

~MiSfit

[halsboss]

Simply not true.
~MiSfit

Hmm, I definitely recall being told that "in the old days" just a few long years ago... happy to stand corrected. By the same token they are cheap for a reason.

Tom's hardware has good reviews and CPU chart comparisons etc http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

Cheerio

[foxyshadis]

Celerons are normally last-gen chips with a current-gen pin package, or the rejects of the current with some (or initially, all) of their cache disabled. The models that fall into the first are why they have a reputation for not supporting extra instructions. Celeron M is probably the only standout; they're real Pentium Ms and Core2 Solos, but without any speedstep - powerful but very hot.

Looking into this just now, I was surprised that the brand was kept alive; I thought it went out and Core Solo was the official budget line name. Guess not!

Shoot, this reminds me, I still have to sell off my old core (not 2) duo. :(