AMD Athlon @ 1.1ghz overclockable on the bios to 1.4ghz
Asus A7V266-E mobo with VIA KT266A
Samsung 200GB 7200RPM IDE HDD
Rosewill Case + 350W PSU
Kingmax 256MB PC2700 RAM
Hauppauge PVR-250
Lite-On DVD-ROM

Questions:
-I want to be able to be recording and watch a recorded show at the same time, is a 1.4 AMD and 256MB of RAM enough? What about watching a DVD?
-Should I stay with this mobo and risk the VIA chipsets or buy a ASUS A7N8X-X Socket A (Socket 462) NVIDIA nForce2 400?

Thanks.

I'd definitely be worrried about the VIa chipset. The DMA problems made a lot of folks swear off those. A search in the forums for Via and DMA will reveal lots of horror stories.

yeah any 133 or 266 via chipsets are highly prone to freezing problems when paired with pvr cards, or anything that does very high amounts of dma traffic for that matter.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

OK, I'll definitely spring for the new board. But what about the other specs, will I be able to do what I want with these parts?

I have the KT266A chipset and I had to frig with the memory timings in the bios to stop it from getting lockups. After doing that however, it has been completely reliable. memtest was invaluable for troubleshooting this problem. Here's my tier-2 post with the other details of my hardware: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4527

yeah if you have a 266 then try it as there were some success stories with them, and just about as many failures, where the 133 I never heard of even one person who claimed success with it.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I guess you're right, there's no harm in trying with the VIA 266. I can always get that new mobo if it's giving me problems.

I am still worried about my other specs, however. Will I be able to record and watch another recording at the same time? Will I be able to watch DVD's while recording? Oh, and I forgot to mention that I also will be using a GeForce4 MX 440 for s-video out.

the processor one of my boxes uses an athlon 1700+ and I think that runs at 1.4G or somewhere there about maybe lower, and it can handle watching and recording simultaneously. it can even handle watching and recording on a software based card at the same time.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Sounds like a plan, guys, thanks for all your help. I'm sure I'll be back once I get all the parts in.