Home Theater Advice Needed

Mayoor

Mayoor

Mayoor

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Joined
9 Jun 2004
Posts
165
Hi there folks I have abit of a dillema

I currently have a Media Center PC with the following spec

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850E energy efficient AM2 processor

Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5 Heat Spreader Lifetime Warranty

Antec Fusion Remote Veris Black MATX Media Center Case - No PSU

Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII *32MB Cache* - OEM

Enermax Pro82+ 385W PSU - 82+% Efficiency certified, 1x PCI-E, ATXv2.3

Sapphire ATI Radeon 2600 Pro 512MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI (AGP) - Retail (11115-01-20)

However it is 3 years old now and simply just too slow when extracting huge 1080p file rar files and refuses to play 1080p files without jerkiness or stuttering. The setup should play 1080p files with no issue but I've troubleshot the issue to death and now am past caring and am just wanting to get something powerful enough to just get the job donw.

So i'm looking to achieve

1) Better 1080p performance
2) Faster extraction of .rar files.

Is it just a case of me getting a faster processor, and if so could you reccomend one. Or do I just need a new motherboard/CPU combo. If I do get a new motherboard CPU combo it needs to be compatible with the compoenents I have listed above.

Can anyone provide some suggestions.
 
what motherboard do you have? is it AM2 or AM2+.

if its AM2 then your looking at a new mobo + processor, but if its an AM2+ then you could get a socket AM3 processor as a nice cheap upgrade. i'm not 100% sure if it will help the 1080p playback (is this more the graphics cards department), but it will certainly help with the .rar extractions
 
Hi,

Do you have a budget in mind?

I have a media center with a Athlon X2 250U (1.6Ghz) , 2GB and AM3 mobo with integrated 785G graphics. The board will take an AM2 processor and I've not noticed any issues with 1080 content though it can depend what format it is in.

The Core I3 and I5 range have HD capable graphics built in though the cost of a CPU and board can be add up a little. DDR 3 memory is dirt cheap though.

Are you showing max CPU usage extracting the .rar?

Sometimes the limiting factor is reading and writing to the drive, especiialy if it is well used with some fragmentation. Read, decode, move, write, move, read etc. A second physical HDD can make all the difference.

AD

Update

The mainboard was MSI 785GTM-E45, cheapest 785G board with HDMI out at the time though limited to 2 sticks of DDR2 so there may be better options now.
 
Last edited:
As decto says with rar extraction on a single machanical drive is gonna be slow even in if you have the fastest drive and a killer cpu.

Depending on the compression level used on the rar file the cpu may have some effect, but media files are pretty well compressed all ready depending on the format. Asking the same question what is the CPU usage on win rar?

For playback I think a HD 6450 might be enough, you can try this before upgrading anything else as it would be perfectly fine to use later on if you did upgrade the Mobo/cpu.

The 2600 Pro is a bit crap for 1080p :)

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6450-review/4

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-043-HS&

As you can see the card is doing all the work. I think this is pretty much standard on all HD 6000 and HD 5000 cards, the HD 6000 with slight improvements over the HD 5000 series. (Nvidia probably do similar)
 
Reaper 392 said:
what motherboard do you have? is it AM2 or AM2+.

if its AM2 then your looking at a new mobo + processor, but if its an AM2+ then you could get a socket AM3 processor as a nice cheap upgrade. i'm not 100% sure if it will help the 1080p playback (is this more the graphics cards department), but it will certainly help with the .rar extractions
Click to expand...

This is the motherboard I have

MOTHERBOARD - ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI 780G
 
decto said:
Hi,

Do you have a budget in mind?

I have a media center with a Athlon X2 250U (1.6Ghz) , 2GB and AM3 mobo with integrated 785G graphics. The board will take an AM2 processor and I've not noticed any issues with 1080 content though it can depend what format it is in.

The Core I3 and I5 range have HD capable graphics built in though the cost of a CPU and board can be add up a little. DDR 3 memory is dirt cheap though.

Are you showing max CPU usage extracting the .rar?

Sometimes the limiting factor is reading and writing to the drive, especiialy if it is well used with some fragmentation. Read, decode, move, write, move, read etc. A second physical HDD can make all the difference.

AD

Update

The mainboard was MSI 785GTM-E45, cheapest 785G board with HDMI out at the time though limited to 2 sticks of DDR2 so there may be better options now.
Click to expand...

I think some of the problem may be the HD. I have a 1TB drive partitioned with 30GB for the OS and 970GB for the storage. The 30GB is always running out of space. Do you think this could be an issue?
 
Sasahara said:
As decto says with rar extraction on a single machanical drive is gonna be slow even in if you have the fastest drive and a killer cpu.

Depending on the compression level used on the rar file the cpu may have some effect, but media files are pretty well compressed all ready depending on the format. Asking the same question what is the CPU usage on win rar?

For playback I think a HD 6450 might be enough, you can try this before upgrading anything else as it would be perfectly fine to use later on if you did upgrade the Mobo/cpu.

The 2600 Pro is a bit crap for 1080p :)

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6450-review/4

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-043-HS&

As you can see the card is doing all the work. I think this is pretty much standard on all HD 6000 and HD 5000 cards, the HD 6000 with slight improvements over the HD 5000 series. (Nvidia probably do similar)
Click to expand...

Well originally I was using the onboard graphics on the MB to play the 1080p files becasue the motherboard is advertised as 1080p compatible but when I tried to actually play files 1080p files on it, it just died and wouldnt play.

Read this

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17955502

Then someone at work told me to get the 2600 pro, this improved things a bit but still not to the point I was comfortable watching so I got fed up after spending all this cash and just went back to watching 720p.

I am now revising the issue and asking what I should do. I guess I can throw another £50 at this to make it go away. So I might just try that GPU you've suggested and see if it works.
 
I'm running an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+, 2 GB DD2-4300 and a HD 5670.
Win 7 64bit.

That CPU is tad slower than yours.

1080p x264 FLAC audio using MPC runs with 15-20% CPU average load with rare spikes below 30%. No playback issues.

The HD 5670 is a faster card, but as far as I know the playback hardware in the HD 6450 is the same or slightly better.
 
Sasahara said:
I'm running an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+, 2 GB DD2-4300 and a HD 5670.
Win 7 64bit.

That CPU is tad slower than yours.

1080p x264 FLAC audio using MPC runs with 15-20% CPU average load with rare spikes below 30%. No playback issues.

The HD 5670 is a faster card, but as far as I know the playback hardware in the HD 6450 is the same or slightly better.
Click to expand...

OK Well I've ordered the 6450. Lets see if that makes the difference.
 
OK couple of things, the actual graphics card I had in the MPC was the 4850 not the 2600, so sorry for this I have replaced the 4850 with the 6450 and am about to test it out. Its a LOT smaller than the 4850. Will post updates in a bit.
 
The 4850 is a powerful card so should have no problems with bluray.

Your disk may be an issue, as the system drive is shared with the storage the heads will be jumping between the two, parts of the disk. Imaging a record player swapping between track 1 and track 6... it takes time.

Usually transcoding builds a buffer, this could be in the memory or could be getting swapped to disk.

Also as the system disk is only 30GB it may well be very fragmented by now exagerating the issues.

As per an earlier post, have a look at the CPU usage during playback.

Which OS is installed?
 
decto said:
The 4850 is a powerful card so should have no problems with bluray.

Your disk may be an issue, as the system drive is shared with the storage the heads will be jumping between the two, parts of the disk. Imaging a record player swapping between track 1 and track 6... it takes time.

Usually transcoding builds a buffer, this could be in the memory or could be getting swapped to disk.

Also as the system disk is only 30GB it may well be very fragmented by now exagerating the issues.

As per an earlier post, have a look at the CPU usage during playback.

Which OS is installed?
Click to expand...

OK SO the new GPU worked! 1080p is streaming fine and looks great, no stuttering or anything.

I'm running Vista Home Edition on it.
 
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