I have enough parts to make a myth tv box... but I am not sure on one part of it....

I have 2 cpu's to choose from, first one is an AMD XP 2000+ (1.67ghz) with 512 PC 2700 Ram on a junky $25 PC-Chips Motherboard, then also a P4 1.7ghz CPU, 512 PC 133 Ram on an Intel Chipset motherboard....

Besides that I have an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with TV Out, and then an ATI Tv Wonder Pro(I had it workign in linux before) ... other than that I am just wondering which of the 2 cpus would be best for a myth box. Thanks for all your help.

Go with the intel parts. They have a better track record and perform better for video processing. I believe overall they are less likely to cause problems with PVRs than the AMD parts.

I am a huge fan of AMD for general purpose PCs but when it comes to PVRs, the intel parts have an advantage, especially in the older chipsets in PCI and DMA handling issues.

Search the forums and you'll see yourself.

What sort of chipset is on the PCChips motherboard? If they are old they may be problematic.

Of course, you could install on both and just find out for sure.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

PS, forget about those ATI parts as well. Get an NVidia chipset video card, you will not regret it. The ATI video card w/TV-out can be made to work but it will be painful. The tuner card might work if its BT878 based (I am not sure)

I'd pick an AMD over Intel any day. More bang for the buck.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

pcchips motherboard is a via chipset, and i would love to buy an nvidia card.... but the gf would kill me if i spent any more money on computer parts heh. And yeah the tuner is not a bt878 card but instead a conexant card, which i have had working in linux as well.

you think that still holds true when its a 1.7ghz P4 vs a 1.67ghz AMD ?

Yes. In addition, memory is very important. PC2700 of PC133 any day..

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

If you choose the AMD motherboard watch out for compatibility issues. I'd do some research on your motherboard regardless of which you choose. It will save you grief in the end.

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/lockups.htm#MOMLIST

Of course, intel chipsets are no guarantee of compatibility either.

I am fairly sure you could get the ATI tv-out card to work but it will require the GATO drivers, etc. Its doable but a lot more work.

Andrew Lynch

Yep. The processor is a called a 2000+ because it performs similar to a 2Ghz P4.

Now the extra stages of the P4 do lend themselves well to the predictable nature of video encoding, but the AMD chip has a higher Instructions Per Clock. This extra horse power means that the AMD will probabably be as powerful as the P4 for video encoding, but more powerful for all other tasks.

I admit this is a broad generalisation, as different chips are better at different things, but you essentially have an intel chip running at 1.7Ghz, and an AMD chip running as a 2Ghz intel equivalent.

Mephi

I think we are talking past each other here. I was trying to point out its the motherboard chipset, not the CPU, that has a large impact on stability.

Things like DMA, PCI, interrupt handling, etc. No one is going to credibly argue that the two CPUs are the same. Clock for clock the AMD wins but that is only part of the story. I still recommend looking into the motherboard chipset to see if it is going to cause trouble.

Its just my $.02! Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

I've built two Knoppmyth boxes, and in both cases used AMD parts. One motherboard was an Asus Nforce2 based board, the other was a dirt cheap ECS motherboard I bought, which is still in my current Myth box.
I will say that I futzed around with an ATI capture card and had no end of pain, but the minute I switched my efforts to a WinPVR-250, life was suddenly beautiful.
In essence though, I am a big believer in sticking to proven parts. Don't use motherboards, either Intel or AMD based, that are brand new designs (so that you can check the online feedback of early users to see if they are in fact stable. Some aren't.), don't use a capture card that only has marginal support, test your hardware for a couple of days doing something else, like running continual burn-in tests, before committing it to something like a Myth install.
All of those measures will greatly reduce the potential for trouble.

While I generally agree with cesman's advice -- AMD over Intel -- I have to admit that PCChips m/b gives me pause. I have a 50% success rate with PCChips mainboards -- one worked, one didn't.

If you were going to display HDTV, you would need a faster processor, and I would recommend Intel because of its higher actual clock rate. In some things, like video decoding, it seems that actual clock speed is king. I started my HD Myth box with AMD but couldn't make it decode satisfactorily. An Intel P4 w/HT fixed things up nicely.

Also I'd recommend you lose the ATI cards. PVR-xxx cards are the way to go for recording, and nVidia 5200 is the best price/performance for display.

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I ended up using the AMD XP 2000+ with the PCChips Mother board. Everything works fine, the TV-Out on the ATI card was very very very easy to get setup I jsut installed the drivers that ATI puts out and booom worked liek a charm. Captureing works fine too with the ATI TV Wonder Pro. Only things to work out are the ATI Remote Wonder and some minor MythTV/MPlayer issues.