> "Dan" <prograde49NOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3a0hv1F62c8puU1@individual.net...
>
> "  Any suggestons or referrals to good links appreciated.  "
>
>
> You should sell your motherboard, Athlon and SDRAM at www.ebay.co.uk , which
> should get you a further $100 or so.  You might also have to raise your
> budget a little on top of that too.
>
> A number of questions remain unanswered:
> 1)  What do you use your PC for?
> 2)  What operating system do you have?
> 3)  What graphics card do you have?
>
> If you are happy with your operating system, and your graphics card is 1.5v
> AGP compatible, then the following might be suitable:
> - AMD Athlon 64 3000+ skt939  http://snipurl.com/a5dp  $153.00
> - Chaintech VNF4/Ultra skt939  http://snipurl.com/daej  $97.00
> - Corsair 2x 512MB PC3200  http://snipurl.com/a5dn  $100.00
> - Antec TRUE430 430W PSU  http://snipurl.com/dij7  $75.00
> TOTAL = $425.00
>
> If you need to upgrade your operating system too, then you'll have to scale
> down the hardware.  Perhaps...
> - MS Windows XP Home SP2  http://snipurl.com/dhyi  $92.95
> - AMD Sempron 3100+ skt754  http://snipurl.com/dijd  $116.00
> - Chaintech VNF3-250  http://snipurl.com/diji  $74.00
> - Corsair 2x 512MB PC3200  http://snipurl.com/a5dn  $100.00
> - Antec TRUE380 380W PSU  http://snipurl.com/594f  $68.00
> TOTAL = $450.95
>
> If you need to buy a compatible graphics card, then the additional costs
> depend on whether you are a gamer or not.
>
>
>
>
>

>Cuzman-Thank you for the informative reply.  The pc is presently dual
>boot w/win2k on one hdd & xp home SP2 on the other.  Used to run win2k
>mostly, moving to xp, probably will eventually have a dual boot w/2
>installs of xp.  XP install is brand new, as my original hdd just failed
>(also got help w/that here - great ng, btw ;-) I keep on top of spyware,
>unneeded junk running in the background, etc, so I think from that
>standpoint it's as fast as it can be.  Mostly I use the pc for fairly
>intensive Internet, I have 4 meg cable, like to dl from ng's & peer to
>peer.  Also I use it to bun cd's & dvd's.  It's in the latter
>application I've noted some slowness (not that I have anything to
>compare it to/haven't really done this stuff on other pc's).  For
>instance, I use the TV card to grab stuff from HBO, which I then burn to
>a DVD+rw to send to a friend.  When the software goes to reduce the file
>size to get 4 hours on one dvd, this usually takes 8 hours or more.  Not
>that big a deal, I do it overnight, but I'm just wondering if I can
>improve on this (w/o spending a ton) & if in the process this might
>speed up general use (probably not on the latter question?). 

"Dan" <prograde49NOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3a0hv1F62c8puU1@individual.net...
>I have a 5 year old Gateway athlon 1100 I would like to get a few more
>years out of.  Has socket A (462) K7T PRO (MS-6330) ver 2.1 ATX VA mobo
>with a VIA KT133 chipset & 200mhz fsb (max 266).  PC has 786 meg of SDRAM &
>2 hdd's, 120 gig & 160 gig.  What are the practical possibilities for
>speeding up this pc?  New CPU?  I guess another possibility is new
>mobo/cpu.  I would like to retain as much of the current pc as possible
>(case, hdd's, dvd burner, TV ATI card, vid & sound cards, ps is 300 watt
>replacement, probably needs upgrade.  I'm guessing a new mob would not
>accept this SDRAM), spend $300 or less, and get a meaningful speed increase
>to allow me to use the machine another 3 years or so.  Any suggestons or
>referrals to good links appreciated.
>
> TIA
>
> Dan

> "Dan" <prograde49NOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3a0hv1F62c8puU1@individual.net...
>
>>I have a 5 year old Gateway athlon 1100 I would like to get a few more
>>years out of.  Has socket A (462) K7T PRO (MS-6330) ver 2.1 ATX VA mobo
>>with a VIA KT133 chipset & 200mhz fsb (max 266).  PC has 786 meg of SDRAM &
>>2 hdd's, 120 gig & 160 gig.  What are the practical possibilities for
>>speeding up this pc?  New CPU?  I guess another possibility is new
>>mobo/cpu.  I would like to retain as much of the current pc as possible
>>(case, hdd's, dvd burner, TV ATI card, vid & sound cards, ps is 300 watt
>>replacement, probably needs upgrade.  I'm guessing a new mob would not
>>accept this SDRAM), spend $300 or less, and get a meaningful speed increase
>>to allow me to use the machine another 3 years or so.  Any suggestons or
>>referrals to good links appreciated.
>>
>>TIA
>>
>>Dan
>
>
> Due to the inherent difficulty in flogging off used motherboards with CPUs
> and memory that are not part of a working computer I'd suggest that you save
> a bit longer and eventually replace the whole base unit - perhaps keeping
> the larger HDD and much needed cards, as long as the old bits can be
> assembled to make a working PC. Its always easier to sell a computer second
> hand if prospective buyers can see it all working.
>
> Why do you need it to be faster - if its only used for MS Office
> applications etc, then if you're patient, that should already be plenty to
> keep you going for a couple more years and you should even be able to use
> the TV card as a PVR (for recording & playing back TV shows) with your
> current setup. I've found that if a machine has been slowing down with
> normal use over time, often "just"  formatting the HDDs and performing a
> complete reinstall makes the world of difference both in terms of speed and
> reliability. How long is it since this was done to it?
>
> Money spent upgrading old machines is often money that could better be spent
> in a replacement (the common exception is with servers that use specialist
> motherboards or hardware where often CPU upgrades are justifiable). In the
> UK where I live they sell "barebones" bundles which normally include a case
> with PSU, Mobo, CPU with HSF and memory - if you can find such bundles where
> you live then when you have enough and cant put up with your current machine
> anymore, then look to replace your base unit. If its low price your looking
> for then several manufacturers (including MSI) have just released AMD Athlon
> 64 motherboards with ATI chipsets which include integrated graphics, audio
> and LAN, these boards still include a couple of IDE ports as well as SATA
> (unlike many of the other Athlon 64 boards these days which are SATA only),
> so you'd be able to use your existing HDD(s). Here's a link to MSIs version:
> http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=RS480M2-IL&class=mb
>
> Paul
>
>
>

> On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 12:37:33 -0500, Dan
> <prograde49NOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I have a 5 year old Gateway athlon 1100 I would like to get a few more
>>years out of.  Has socket A (462) K7T PRO (MS-6330) ver 2.1 ATX VA mobo
>>with a VIA KT133 chipset & 200mhz fsb (max 266).  PC has 786 meg of
>>SDRAM & 2 hdd's, 120 gig & 160 gig.  What are the practical
>>possibilities for speeding up this pc? 
>
>
> The most demanding tasks must be considered.  It should be
> plenty fast for office, surfing, email, etc, already.  If it
> seems sluggish at these things too, you might have spyware,
> an overly cluttered/encumbered windows installation that
> could benefit from a clean install.
>
>
>
>>New CPU?
>
>
> Maybe.  Does the board support manual multiplier
> adjustments?  If so, a Mobile Barton Xp2400 might be a good
> choice.  if not, an Athlon XP2400 w/266FSB.  "Usually" a
> socket A board will accept these w/o issue but there's
> always some chance a bios glitch might surface, I suggest
> upgrading bios if possible, perhaps if it's exactly same as
> the MSI board, using an MSI bios rather than Gateway, which
> would (usually) be older, even their most recent bios have
> historically been older than what board manufacturer has
> available.... IF the bios can be swapped without fooling
> with editing to change vendor ID strings or forcing differnt
> bios... things that are possible but not for the faint of
> heart.
>
>
>>I guess another
>>possibility is new mobo/cpu.  I would like to retain as much of the
>>current pc as possible (case, hdd's, dvd burner, TV ATI card, vid &
>>sound cards, ps is 300 watt replacement, probably needs upgrade.  I'm
>>guessing a new mob would not accept this SDRAM), spend $300 or less, and
>>get a meaningful speed increase to allow me to use the machine another 3
>>years or so.  Any suggestons or referrals to good links appreciated.
>
>
> DDR memory is pretty cheap right now as it usually is in
> Spring... that could work in your favor since there is no
> significant upgrade for the motherboard that would still use
> PC133 (SDRAM) memory.  You could get 1GB of PC3200 memory
> for about $100 if you keep an eye open for deals.  Another
> $80 for a board (there are large variations, decide what you
> want featurewise and brands then you can narrow that down
> some).
>
> Then of course the CPU... whatever if left of the budget
> will dictate what to choose.  Sempron 3100 or Athlon 64
> would be preferred, but if you needed a new PSU too then the
> budget might require older technology, like an nForce2
> board, Barton XP????, plus the power supply.  Frankly I'd
> budget in another few dozen $$ for a PSU before downgrading
> to an older platform, but your current PSU might be
> sufficient, we don't know what you have nor the video card
> (which is typically 2nd highest power consumer in a system,
> for some systems).
>
> So there wasn't anything unique or revealing in my post, I
> pointed out the pretty obvious/common choice, which is
> common because it's a good one.  Do keep in mind though that
> any modern CPU will produce more heat, your case may not
> have sufficient airflow and could need some modifications to
> be optimal for a new build.  If this is your only system and
> you decide to get a power supply too, it might make sense to
> get a whole case with decent PSU in it, so you can have the
> new parts pretty much working before you have to dismantle
> current PC to finalize the new system with the reused parts.

> On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 21:23:01 -0500, Dan
> <prograde49NOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Kony-Thanks for the great response.  Mostly I use the pc for fairly
>>intensive Internet, I have 4 meg cable, like to dl from ng's & peer to
>>peer. 
>
>
> See my other reply in this thread, made a couple minutes
> ago.  For the peer to peer, if that is an issue you might
> try a different program, and/or tweaking your networking
> settings (Google for TCP/IP tweaks).  Even so, if your cable
> upload speed is capped, ultimately that might be your limit,
> as your current system should be sufficient even for 4 meg
> cable...  though SCSI drives might help if you had a vast
> number of simultaneous connections, but that's a bit extreme
> for peer to peer alone.
>
>
>
>>Also I use it to burn cd's & dvd's.  It's in the latter
>>application I've noted some slowness (not that I have anything to
>>compare it to/haven't really done this stuff on other pc's).  For
>>instance, I use the TV card to grab stuff from HBO, which I then burn to
>>a DVD+rw to send to a friend.
>
>
> First, do you "need" to edit it later?  A modern system can
> capture video and compress it in realtime, no need to
> recompress it later.  You only need decide how that friend
> "needs" it, what format.  For DVD (standalone player) the
> hardware requirements are even lower than with some things,
> a newer set of hardware should be able to not only capture
> compressed but burn to DVD in realtime too, though I'd
> recommend just capturing to a file then buring whole thing
> later, skipping the recompression/conversion step.  However,
> i've no idea if your present software can accomodate this.
> It is drifting off topic a bit and better addressed in a
> video capture/editing related (newsgroup or web) forum.
>
>
>
>>Not sure about the multipliers, have to
>>check, not sure what that is (overclocking? I'm afraid I'm new to this)
>>bios date is 9/00, as I recall.  I see what you mean about sdram mobos
>>being a waste of time; I'm surprised the ddr is that cheap.  When I
>>upgraded I bought crucial, maybe it's not necessary to get that
>>expensive.  PSU is 300 watts, maybe marginal, vid card is nvidia riva
>>tnt model 64 w/32 meg of ram.  AGP 2.00, apparently.  I agree in the end
>>probably best to just start a whole new pc, if nothing else at least
>>I'll have one running so I can get info if things don't go smoothly.  If
>>my additional info suggests an other ideas, please pass them on.
>>Thanks again,
>
>
> Considering your goal I would skip the upgrade CPU for that
> motherboard and go with Athlon 64, or P4 platform as second
> choice.  Your power supply probably will need replaced,
> considering that it's from an era when they were targeted
> towards peak 5V output capacity, while today's systems
> utilize quite a bit of 12V as a varying load, difficult for
> an older PSU to handle.

>Kony-After reading the replies here, I'm beginning to think I should
>just keep what I've got for the time being.  I have regularly added ram,
>hdd capacity, updated disk burners & psu to keep it pretty "fit"; maybe
>it's not so bad after all ;-)  One thing for sure with pc's, waiting
>will only get you more for less.  Yeah, the video thing is the only area
>where I was beginning to wonder about the system's abilities.  I know I
>can do the compression as I grab the video, but despite reading & a lot
>of experimentation, I just can't seem to get the quality I'm looking
>for, regardless of the settings I use to grab the video or burn it.  For
>example, you can dl an episode of Sopranos or the like from a ng or p2p.
>  Hour long program, file's less than 400 meg AVI.  Very, very nice
>quality when burned to a dvd+rw, certainly the equivalent of LP video
>tape speed, and you can get 4 hours on one disk (again, I share these
>and similar programs with a friend who does not have hbo etc.).

> On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 18:43:57 -0500, Dan
> <prograde49NOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Kony-After reading the replies here, I'm beginning to think I should
>>just keep what I've got for the time being.  I have regularly added ram,
>>hdd capacity, updated disk burners & psu to keep it pretty "fit"; maybe
>>it's not so bad after all ;-)  One thing for sure with pc's, waiting
>>will only get you more for less.  Yeah, the video thing is the only area
>>where I was beginning to wonder about the system's abilities.  I know I
>>can do the compression as I grab the video, but despite reading & a lot
>>of experimentation, I just can't seem to get the quality I'm looking
>>for, regardless of the settings I use to grab the video or burn it.  For
>>example, you can dl an episode of Sopranos or the like from a ng or p2p.
>> Hour long program, file's less than 400 meg AVI.  Very, very nice
>>quality when burned to a dvd+rw, certainly the equivalent of LP video
>>tape speed, and you can get 4 hours on one disk (again, I share these
>>and similar programs with a friend who does not have hbo etc.).
>
>
> That doesn't sound all that good though, maybe only 320 x
> 240 resolution?  It's pretty hard to get full resolution
> down to 400MB per hour without significant quality loss.
>
>
>
>>Now,
>>when I try & get the shows right off my own cable, a 3 gig file looks
>>like sh*t by comparison to these dl's.  Looks great on the monitor (when
>>not recording), looks like crap when I play the file at anywhere near
>>400 meg per hour, burned to a disk or right on the pc.  I've tried
>>various avi settings, mpeg 1, 2 & 4, etc.  I can get good quality, but
>>only with files MUCH larger than these 300-400 meg avi dl's.  if you
>>have any idea how they do that, or know where I might look, PLEASE pass
>>it on.
>
>
> The most obvious answer "could" be that your source is
> noisey.  Even a little bit of noise will GREATLY increase
> the compression data rate needed.  It's also possible they
> used a different codec, or multi-pass encoding, or
> filters... again this is a topic with a broad expanse and a
> video editing oriented forum might have the most help for
> you, but one thing you could do is take a file that looks
> VERY good, and see if you can recompress that and get same
> quality (it will be worse quality due to being recompressed,
> but the point is to start out with a known, fixed source and
> try different settings, codecs, etc, comparing the outcome).
>
>
>
>>Tried posting in several dvd-video related ng's, no help.  I'm
>>using the software that came with the card, ATI Multimedia Center 9.01
>>for obtaining the video, for burning I'm using Nero Ultra 6.6.0.  Is
>>there something beter?
>
>
> Well you wrote about the time it takes to recompress it, I
> presume that is done by Nero?  If so, what's it being
> recorded as by ATI multimedia center?
>
> I try to avoid ATI software, so I dont' have much help there
> but if you're going to recompress the video anyway, (and you
> have the spare HDD space) you might see if it'll support
> using a lossless compression codec.  Google for some
> "lossless video codec", I dont' know what the ATI software
> will do.
>
>
>

>Kony-Thanks for the suggestions.  With at least some of the dl'd small
>files they user indicated they had digital cable, which I do not,
>probably makes a difference. I'm sure side by side with an original you
>can see these files are lossy, but just using as a "digital vcr" for a
>one time viewing of a "tv show" they're good enough for me.   I recently
>dl'd new software from ati to update the program, this one has a 640 x
>480 mpeg 4 avi format that looks promising, a test gave me the quality
>I'm looking for at about 400 meg/hour.  Compression has been by Nero, I
>do use the 2 pass encoding, which slows things down a bit.  I'm guessing
>the new format I just mentioned should work better at burn as well,
>requiring minimal compression.
>
>Thank you again, I appreciate your help.  I did try asking these
>questions on a more appropriate forum, got little or no reply.
>
>Dan
>

> >
>
> Ideally you dont' want to capture in any (lossy) compressed
> format (including  MPEG4) then recompress with Nero, which'd
> be turning it into MPEG2, presumably.  As I briefly
> mentioned previously, the needed final format could matter.
> If the player can do MPEG4, you may not need recompress with
> Nero, only burn the file.  I don't think most older
> standalone DVD players will support that though.  Otherwise
> if Nero's going to be converting it to MPEG2 anyway, you
> might look into capturing in MPEG2 and what it'd take to
> keep it intact rather than having Nero (reMPEG2) recompress
> it, as I dont' know why it would/does.