My Athlon 64 3400+ system is not quite fast enough to deinterlace HD the way I like it, so I'm thinking of upgrading to a Core 2 Duo system, a lot like the Dragon 2.0.

I already have a Hauppague analog and a pcHDTV HD-3000 card, along with an Antec 500W power supply and a nice Silverstone case. I'm outputting 720p via VGA to a Sony LCD rear-projection TV.

What do you guys think of this combination of hardware?

https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wi ... tle=MythTV

If you have a little more to spend and are willing to overclock (the 6300 is a great overclocker) you should upgrade the mother board and memory.

MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131070
$150.99

Memory 6400
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820144020
$109.99


The MB would be $80 more and the memory would be an additional $5 more.

With this combo using stock cooling you should be able to run the cpu @ 3Ghz or better.

Stock the CPU runs at 1.86 GHz

If you don't fell comfortable overclocking than I would still recommend upgrading the memory. In the future it will be handy having the faster memory and you will be able to run better trimmings now.

The one problem I do see with this setup is the lack of PCI slots, only 3 on both of these boards. Make sure you will have enough

Yeah, what's the deal with the lack of PCI slots? Seems like every one I looked at had a max of 3. Didn't they ALL used to have 5 or 6 back in the day?

And, didn't I hear somewhere to avoid Intel ICH8 mobos? Bad linux support or something like that? That may have been a while ago.

Good idea on the memory though, I changed it.

Yeah, seems kind of sparse. What's with those PCI X1 slots? It's got 3 of them. I've never seen anything that plugs into those. Are they good for anything?

3 PCI slots would be enough (for me anyway), if the onboard audio worked right out of the box, and you didn't have to add a (supported) sound card. With this mobo you've got S/PDIF, Firewire and external SATA, right out the back. That's nice.

I think I would be ok with 3 pci slots, since I have 2 capture cards now, and am thinking about that ethernet HD Homerun device for more hd tuners. (It's apparently well-supported).

I would still theoretically have one slot open for a sound card if needed. Is one chipset better than another for onboard audio (analog or digital?)