HD performance on proposed computer?

[Joony]

Hey there, I have a slim dell PC laying around, it's a optiplex GX240.

The CPU is a Pentium 4 1.6Ghz Northwood core, with 512mb SDRAM (before the DDR P4 days)

I currently have an ATI Rage Ultra on it, and i'm sure that won't run BTV.

I also just bought a FusionHDTV5 Lite, which does low profile.

There are also some Geforce 6200 Low profile AGP cards out there on newegg.

How would the performance be for HDTV on such a configuration?

1.6ghz/512ram/Geforce6200/FusionHDTV5 Lite

Wish I could afford a newer GX620 with PCI-E/DDR2/SATA

[HomeyFour]

I think you should do fine. The Geforce 6200 offloads a lot of the decoding from the CPU. IF you decide to get an SDTV tuner as well, I would definitely recommend a hardware-based tuner.

[cmumford]

There is a similar thread to which I posted some of my data with the same card you have - albeit with a faster CPU. It may be of some help to you.

[Kilrsat]

You'll see 80-100% cpu usage while playing back HD on that machine. If all its doing is playback, that may be ok. If it has other services running, then you'll have issues.

[Joony]

Hmm, what about a server who's job is only to record it and not watch it at all? I suppose the requirements for a high end video card would not be necessary in such a case? and the CPU requirement should be lower since it's only capturing a transport stream. Thoughts?

Thinking about BTV link!

[cmumford]

Originally Posted by Joony

Hmm, what about a server who's job is only to record it and not watch it at all? I suppose the requirements for a high end video card would not be necessary in such a case? and the CPU requirement should be lower since it's only capturing a transport stream. Thoughts?

Thinking about BTV link!

On my 3.04 GHz machine recording 1080i HD content takes nearly zero CPU (<5%). All of the CPU utiliization is in the playback.

[Jakesty]

I have a Hauppauge 500mce on a PIII 800 Intel with 512mb memory and can easily record 2 shows at the same time or watch and record. I even run folding at home on the computer to utilize some wasted computer cycles.
Without folding running, I generally see a 30% cpu while watching. The most important thing in your configuration is that you have a hardware encoder. It will do most of the processing and your cpu will coast.
Jake

[mgithens]

Originally Posted by Jakesty

I have a Hauppauge 500mce on a PIII 800 Intel with 512mb memory and can easily record 2 shows at the same time or watch and record. I even run folding at home on the computer to utilize some wasted computer cycles.
Without folding running, I generally see a 30% cpu while watching. The most important thing in your configuration is that you have a hardware encoder. It will do most of the processing and your cpu will coast.
Jake

but your setup is SD... HD is about 10X the data rate...

[rdb4133]

I would recommend to try and upgrade that CPU if possible. Maybe even throw in a RAM upgrade to 1GB. I actually was able to use the FusionHDTV software on my Dell Inspiron laptop using the Fusion5 HDTV USB tuner, which is a 1.3 Celeron M with 256mb of ram. But it somehow scaled down the quality of HD so that it could play smoothly.

[Jakesty]

Originally Posted by mgithens

but your setup is SD... HD is about 10X the data rate...

Are you saying that HD files then are 10 times larger? If I have a 1 hour show of 3gb, then I'd have a 30gb file with HD? I understand they could be larger, but that doesn't make sense.

Jake

[nanook105]

With 4 minutes padding on start and end, my HD recordings average about 9.5 GB per hour

[pdaughe]

Yup, we recorded the NFL play-off games, each 3.5 hours -- 36GBs. It was a great test -- the recordings and playback were PERFECT, although I can't e-mail my older brother a copy of the games!

[rdb4133]

You could always cut out the commercials with VideoReDo Plus, then compress the show down to XviD and it will be MUCH smaller and still look excellent