Hi, I am currently shopping around for a new computer and capture card. The capture card I am looking at is the Hauppauge pvr 250 which I will use primarily for capturing from my xbox and a little of TV. I am looking at a Dell Dimension 8400 with: Pentium® 4 Processor 630 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800 FSB), 512MB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (2x256M), 160 GB hardrive, 128MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon™ X300 SE, Sound Blaster® Live! 24-bit ADVANCED HD™ Audio. Will the computer be fast enough to capture from the card, and do I not need all of the components upgraded?
the Hauppauge pvr 250 is capable of doing most of the analog to digital conversion by itself and therefore does not require a very high performance computer. although, A/D conversion will always be taxing on your hard drive sub-system. i think the specs on your new Dell are more than adequate, but you might consider getting a second dedicated hard drive, or set up a RAID 0 system for optimum performance. you will also find you will need the extra storage space...
What's your current system? It's possible, with the PVR-250 that you may only need a new, second, larger drive, just for captures, but the rest of your hardware is fine. If you were purchasing a cheap $30 "soft" capture card, then go buy the Dell.
My current system is this: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,106319,tfg,tfg,00.asp. I have one of the older ATI ALL IN WONDER 128 PCI PROs, but my computer will slow it down and I couldn't get it to work. Might it be because my computer does have video overlay?
The link to your computer doesn't work, but you don't NEED overlay. VMR7 or VMR9 will work easily. GB-PVR software to go with the Hauppauge will be nice. Basically all we need to know is how fast the CPU is, and how big the hard drive is.
It has a 100GB hard drive, 1.8 GHz Atholon XP 2200+, and 512MB of DDR266 SDRAM. What are VMR7 and VMR9?
Just get the Hauppauge, then consider a second drive for captures. You will have NO trouble at all with that system. It's plenty fast enough for a hardware encoder card. VMR7 and VMR9 are methods of putting video on the screen via capture (live TV). Overlay takes a LOT more system resources and video processing power. VMR 7 is older (using DirectX 7) and VMR9 uses DirectX 9. As long as you've updated to DirectX 9.0c from microsoft, you'll have NO problems capturing and watching.
Should I get a second hard drive because of the need for space or for better/faster transfering? So are VMR7 and VMR9 used to capture or just watch after it is captured, I am confused.
A second hard drive is always a good idea, because capturing video can chew up space fast. You could easily capture with what you have, it was just a suggestion. VMR7 and 9 would be used for LiveTV and viewing, not capturing...the whole point I'm making here, is that your system, with your current video card will work with no trouble at all, using the Hauppauge PVR-250.
