I have a HTPC with an Athlon 64 3400 CPU (socket 939.) Having some issues recording HDTV, however playback is fine. With the high price of dualcore 939 CPU's( 3x the price of AM2's?) would I be better off buying a new AM2 MB and CPU or is there hope in upgrading my 939 setup to a Dualcore. Also would there be that much gain going from an Athlon 64 3400 to say an Athlon X2 3800,4200,4800? Thanks for any advice!
I would upgrade some motherboards are hybrid now that support am2 and phenom 3 & 4 core processors for some great buys march over to Newegg.com or tigerdirect.com u can check out user reviews which will help give u some guidance. I am using am2 4200 2.2ghz and can play crysis with no lag using an nvidia 8500gt pcie card. ECS or elite group has a cool new black board with hdmi it's gotten mixed reviews but so did the board I am using and its been running solid near 2.5 years. So sometimes u got to figure ppl just dont know what they are doing. I wanna add that if u sell you old setup on ebay mobo and processor u may come out ahead or near even on the new setup as prices have dropped dramatically.
elliott makes a good point. Just wondering gullzway, how do you have your computer setup to record HD? are you recording OTA broadcast? What are the compression ratios? What kind of capture card? What hard drive? I ask all this because it could be your hard drive is not fast enough and not a CPU issue. The amount of data rate for HD is strong. Especially if you are capturing in 1080p. Most of the time, you have to set up a raid 0 to have the speed you need for HD 1080p capture. One more thing, try to defrag the harddrive you use for capture. This may speed things up too. just my 2 cents.
if it was me i would get rid of that amd cpu /motherboard and go Intel since Intel mostly has most bang for buck in the market but some people prefer amd so i would say go for the am2 setup if your havening troubles choosing which cpu to go to tomshardware or xbit labs or anandtech they usually have recent roundups which shows you which cpu to buy for which price bracket
