SageTV support for Asus Wifi/TV Tuner ?

[SteinyD]

I am about to do a major hardware upgrade. The system will consist of an Asus PW5D2 Premium motherboard (955x chipset) and an Intel 3.0 ghz dual core CPU. I'm going to build a Raid 0+1 configuration based on 4 Serial ATA II drives. My video card will be the Asus Extreme AX850XT PE/2DHTV Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition PCI Express.

I'm now choosing a new tuner card having used the Happauge PVR 250 in my current pc setup. I am considering the Hauppauge PVR 500 as I realize this card is compatible with SageTV.

However, I'm thinking about buying the Asus PW5D2 Premium card bundled with their Wifi/Tv Tuner card ( http://event.asus.com/2005/ailife/wifi-tv.htm ). Is this tuner card compatible with SageTV?

Thanks in advance!
David

[dagar]

Do yourself a favor and avoid the Presshott. Unless you want a toasty or noisey HTPC. I know the mobos are nice (I occasionally drool over the features) but just say no to the easy bake oven.

[Wheemer]

I don't think those asus tv cards are hardware encoders...

[SteinyD]

Could you provide a bit more insight into your comments? This is not going to be a HTPC. I have dedicated home theater equipment in a formal theater already. This PC is a pc I use for editing video, browsing the web, PVR functionality and playing an occasional game.

What is your recommended 'cool' alternative?

Originally Posted by dagar

Do yourself a favor and avoid the Presshott. Unless you want a toasty or noisey HTPC. I know the mobos are nice (I occasionally drool over the features) but just say no to the easy bake oven.

[dagar]

The confined horizontal HTPC cases make cooling difficult for several reasons, including: no natural convection, limited space, and limited ventilation.

But if you're not using it as an HTPC then that's a different story. The thermal requirements for quietly cooling (at a reasonable temp) are much higher than the Northwood or the various A64 varieties.

You will see more benefit in the non-linear digital video editing area with a P4 than a similar A64 but the A64 is comparable if not somewhat better (or worse) depending upon application. That said, I do like the feature-set of the newer intel boards (ok, just the HD audio, everything else is the same or better.)

If I was building a system like that I'd either look at a Pentium D (Dual core) or either a Venice-core (perhaps even a San Diego core) A64; either a 945P for the D or a NF4 for the A64. But for HTPC either a Northwood or A64 Venice; cooling a Presscott in an HTPC application is an asinine proposition, esp. after shelling out that kind of dough.

Me personally, I have a mixture of AMD and Intel systems (including 2 3.2Ghz Northwood systems)

[Crashless]

AMD should be releasing a new X2 processor soon (next couple of weeks) that will compete with the lower-end pentium Ds.

I'd highly recommend one of those beauties, as all the reviews have been very positive - especially for games. They are on my current 'upgrade list' for when I build out my system again.

Couple of considerations - is this PC going to be in your living room? Are you connecting it to your TV, or using a separate client? Either way, it will have to be on while watching TV, and a giant turbofan infested case would not be the best thing to compliment a television show.

If it's in a separate room, and you're using a different client - go nuts, but if you think you're only going to use it 'a little bit', you might want to think of contigency plans for when you get addicted.

[SteinyD]

Its amazing how far off topic this thread has gone from my initial question! ;-) My initial question doesn't matter anymore as I've already realized that the Asus tuner card doesn't have a decoder.

So, let's keep this off topic! This is a machine going into my home office / playroom. Noise is not an issue. I'm building this machine inside a full tower (Thermaltake 'Shark') that has plenty of room and ventilation. I'm likely buying a Thermaltake or OCZ 600w+ power supply, so plenty of power with support for 12v, PCI-E and SATA drives.

I think in my original message I outlined what I was going to buy (can't see it at the moment). I'm buying the Asos P5WD2 Premium based on the 955x chipset. Have a look at their site for the specs. This board isn't missing a thing! I'm going with the Intel 830, 3.0ghz Dual Core chip (best price point at the moment & will be faster then my current P4 3.0 ghz HT). Inside it, will be an ASUS Extreme AX850XT Platinum Edition, based on the Radeon x850 XT chipset. This provides dual DVI to drive my dual panel displays. I will have 4 drives in the machine - Hitachi Deskstar 250gb SATA II drives, setup in a Raid 0+1 configuration. Memory will be a pair of 1gb dual channel 667 mhz sticks from OCZ or, 2 pair of 512mb dual channel 800 mhz sticks from Corsair (can't decide if the speed matter more than the amount of memory - 1gb of 800mhz or 2 gb of 667mhz?). I'm probably going to throw onto the CPU a Global Orb II heatsink from Thermaltake.

Unless someone tells me otherwise, I'm going to buy the Hauppauge PVR-500SE card (will be running XP Pro though). By the way, I use SageTV to pull off my favorite programs, edit out the commercials, put title screens on them and burn them to DVDs.


Thoughts? Hurry - I'm planning to order the parts and pieces tonight!

David

Originally Posted by Crashless

AMD should be releasing a new X2 processor soon (next couple of weeks) that will compete with the lower-end pentium Ds.

I'd highly recommend one of those beauties, as all the reviews have been very positive - especially for games. They are on my current 'upgrade list' for when I build out my system again.

Couple of considerations - is this PC going to be in your living room? Are you connecting it to your TV, or using a separate client? Either way, it will have to be on while watching TV, and a giant turbofan infested case would not be the best thing to compliment a television show.

If it's in a separate room, and you're using a different client - go nuts, but if you think you're only going to use it 'a little bit', you might want to think of contigency plans for when you get addicted.

[dagar]

tangents? er, why would we not evolve into a tangent?

Eh, go with the 2gb, why not a 7800 since you have the dough :P, and get a good HSF ... Either a Thermalright or Zalman should do it (Thermal XP120 is awesome and awesomely huge)

[Crashless]

Just to play devil's advocate:

I'd say the 800mhz ram would be better for a machine like that - as long as you still have a couple of slots to expand later, I'm sure you'll be glad you did.

I agree! Get a 7800GTX! (I just want someone to have one because I can't...)

And since we're talking performance - take a look at the 3ware RAID5 controllers, you'll get 50% more space and only a tiny performance penalty. PLUS, if you get a 8 channel card, you can use OCE and expand as you fill the space! (sorry, that's on my wishlist too...)

I'm not sure what the 'SE' is on that PVR500, but I have a PVR500MCE and love it. Definitly important on motherboards w/ PCI-E, as you usually only get 3 PCI slots. Anyone else remember the pain the the ass transition from ISA to PCI? I feel like it's happening all over again - no cards available for the new standard, and dwendling numbers of 'legacy' slots on new MBs. Ahhh, technology marches on...

[Kanati]

I am eyeballing the X2 and PentD's myself but nothing I've seen implies that they do gaming better than a single core. In fact the opposite has been shown. Mainly because games aren't optimized for multiple processors. I think the king of the game rigs will still be single core machines for the next year or so until game programmers start trying to split the game into multiple threads that can truly take advantage of the multiple cores.

Personally, I don't plan on upgrading TOO awful soon anyway just because last december I dropped about 4 grand building an AMD FX55 system with 2 gig of ram and a 6800GTOC (ok, that might get upgraded before too long, but not the cpu/ram) with a 400 gig SATA raid0 boot drive (1.5 TB total). It plays anything I want to throw at it rather well so I'm quite happy.

[SteinyD]

Why the 7800 over the 850xt?

Originally Posted by dagar

tangents? er, why would we not evolve into a tangent?

Eh, go with the 2gb, why not a 7800 since you have the dough :P, and get a good HSF ... Either a Thermalright or Zalman should do it (Thermal XP120 is awesome and awesomely huge)

[SteinyD]

I'm doing the upgrade since I have another machine having too many problems.

Why the 7800GTX over the 850XL?

Tell me more about the 3ware controllers. 50% more space? How?

As for the memory, I'd start with 2 gb of 800 mhz memory if I could find it. So far, only 667mhz 1 gb sticks. So, if I go with the 512mb pair of 800s, an upgrade will only take me to 3 gb later without tossing out the existing memory (4 total memory slots, up to 8 gb).

Mind you, these new mobos have very limited expansion space. 2 slots will be taken by the video card (if I go with the card mentioned above and the tuner card will take another.

Oh, and sorry. I meant the MCE card. I'll be using XP Pro and not Media Center with the card however.

Originally Posted by Crashless

Just to play devil's advocate:

I'd say the 800mhz ram would be better for a machine like that - as long as you still have a couple of slots to expand later, I'm sure you'll be glad you did.

I agree! Get a 7800GTX! (I just want someone to have one because I can't...)

And since we're talking performance - take a look at the 3ware RAID5 controllers, you'll get 50% more space and only a tiny performance penalty. PLUS, if you get a 8 channel card, you can use OCE and expand as you fill the space! (sorry, that's on my wishlist too...)

I'm not sure what the 'SE' is on that PVR500, but I have a PVR500MCE and love it. Definitly important on motherboards w/ PCI-E, as you usually only get 3 PCI slots. Anyone else remember the pain the the ass transition from ISA to PCI? I feel like it's happening all over again - no cards available for the new standard, and dwendling numbers of 'legacy' slots on new MBs. Ahhh, technology marches on...

[Crashless]

OK, here we go:

Originally Posted by SteinyD

Why the 7800GTX over the 850XL?

Because it's a newer generation card, roughly twice as fast.

Review: http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0

Great purchse deal: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=923991

Tell me more about the 3ware controllers. 50% more space? How?

They use RAID5 instead of 0+1. Using parity, you only lose the space of 1 drive to redundancy. So in your situation, you would get the usable space of 3 drives (750gb) instead of 2 drives (500gb). This doesn't mean you can only lose one specific drive. Any drive can fail and the system will be fine. The other nice thing is that if you get a 8 channel card (more $$$) you can start with 4 drives and add more as you go. You still only lose 1 drive to parity, so you could ultimately expand to 7 usable drives at 250 per that's 1.75TB! <- say this like the professor in Back to the Future, it's fun.

As for the memory, I'd start with 2 gb of 800 mhz memory if I could find it. So far, only 667mhz 1 gb sticks. So, if I go with the 512mb pair of 800s, an upgrade will only take me to 3 gb later without tossing out the existing memory (4 total memory slots, up to 8 gb).

Sounds good to me, anyone disagree?

Mind you, these new mobos have very limited expansion space. 2 slots will be taken by the video card (if I go with the card mentioned above and the tuner card will take another.

The 7800gtx is only a single slot solution, so it won't take that first PCI slot. This is a huge advantage over the other card you're looking at. If you have the $$$, there isn't a faster card out there right now.

Let us know what you get!

[SteinyD]

Hey - thanks for the tips! I thought I understood the Raid solutions but I guess I didn't. In the case of what you've explained I would think I'm set. The Asus P5WD2 Premium supports Raid 5 as well. So then I'll get my 4 drives and setup 5 instead of 0+1. As long as you're at it, what is the benefit of Raid 10 over 5 (if there is one)?

As for 'agreed' on the memory decision below, I cannot find 800mhz 1 gb sticks. So ... ???

As for that video card, I'm going to go do a bit more research. Thanks for the article and the deal thread. Dell is now 2 weeks before shipping. I noted that the card Dell is selling is an OEM card. As I haven't been a NVidia customer (been buying ATI for years), is that of any concern? Is there one OEM dealer that is better than another?

Thanks again for the time taken in your explanations!!

Originally Posted by Crashless

OK, here we go:



Because it's a newer generation card, roughly twice as fast.

Review: http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0

Great purchse deal: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=923991



They use RAID5 instead of 0+1. Using parity, you only lose the space of 1 drive to redundancy. So in your situation, you would get the usable space of 3 drives (750gb) instead of 2 drives (500gb). This doesn't mean you can only lose one specific drive. Any drive can fail and the system will be fine. The other nice thing is that if you get a 8 channel card (more $$$) you can start with 4 drives and add more as you go. You still only lose 1 drive to parity, so you could ultimately expand to 7 usable drives at 250 per that's 1.75TB! <- say this like the professor in Back to the Future, it's fun.



Sounds good to me, anyone disagree?



The 7800gtx is only a single slot solution, so it won't take that first PCI slot. This is a huge advantage over the other card you're looking at. If you have the $$$, there isn't a faster card out there right now.

Let us know what you get!

[Crashless]

BFG is one of the best NVidia manufaturers. They ship them overclocked and they have the best warrenties available. Now how that particular deal is affected by the OEM box status, I'm not sure. Usually white box deals don't come with support, but I would assume the warenty still applies - I would check that though.

Sorry, I wasn't clear about the memory thing - I'd go with the 512 sticks of 800mhz over the 1gb sticks of 667. Unless you edit features or HUGE files, you'll be fine for now with 1gb, but you _will_ eventually want to upgrade and you don't want to be stuck with slower memory. (disclaimer: I'm only making this recommendation based on your other components - if you're looking at that CPU, and that video card, you HAVE to get the fastest memory available to take advantage of the coin you're spending elsewhere. You don't want to create bottlenecks that are costly to fix.)

I didn't realize that MB had built in RAID 5. Even without hearing anything about it, I'd still say you should definitly go with that, as you were going to use it anyways and you can just select RAID5 instead of 0+1. I'm not as familiar with RAID10. Here's a description of the differences between RAID 0+1 and 1+0 (oh yeah, RAID10=RAID1+0):

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...Level01-c.html

I can't find a RAID 5 explanation right now for some reason, but unless you're editing uncompressed HD video, you'll be fine with RAID 5. Advantages of 1+0 over 5: _slightly_ faster, and you can lose 2 drives if they're on the same part of the mirror (rare). Disadvantages: less space, 50% in fact in a 4 drive configuration.

I think that covers it. Anything I missed?

[SteinyD]

This is all your fault! I've gone ahead and ordered the card from Dell. Though I'm more of a console gamer (Xbox) then PC gamer, this might turn me back into a PC gamer.

Now, if I've understood your explanation about Raid 5 and the Asus mobo supports it, you've also convinced me to get 4 drives and setup Raid 5. Now, only if Hitachi would make their 500gb Sata II drive available ... :-)

Have a SATA II drive preference? I was planning to go with the Hitachi 250gb drives as their specs and reviews seem to be better than Maxtor and Seagate. My mind can be changed! :-)


[QUOTE=Crashless]OK, here we go:



Because it's a newer generation card, roughly twice as fast.

Review: http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0

Great purchse deal: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=923991

[stanger89]

First only the 3ware 9000 series support OCE.

Originally Posted by SteinyD

Hey - thanks for the tips! I thought I understood the Raid solutions but I guess I didn't. In the case of what you've explained I would think I'm set. The Asus P5WD2 Premium supports Raid 5 as well.

But not hardware RAID-5. What does that mean, well it works like this, the RAID does a XOR calculation on everything written to a RAID-5 array (to create the parity info). On a hardware RAID-5 card, that's done in hardware, so there's no CPU hit writting to the array. In your situation (or with one of the many cheap cards) that task (XOR calculation) is onloaded to your CPU, so there can be a significant CPU hit when writing to the array.

So then I'll get my 4 drives and setup 5 instead of 0+1. As long as you're at it, what is the benefit of Raid 10 over 5 (if there is one)?

Well, it's theoretically possible for a RAID-10 array to survive 2 disks failing simultaneously. And there's no parity calculations so it 'could' be faster. However, you're comparing basically a 2 disk stripe vs 3 disk stripe+overhead so it's probably a tossup on writes.

One last thing, it sounds as though you'll be using the array as your one and only drive, is that true? IMO that is not a good idea, RAID arrays each have different purposes, but basically they're for doing what's impossible with a single disk. Basically I'd sumarrize them like this:
RAID-1 is for when you CAN'T go down for a second (not true of home PCs generally)
RAID-0 is for when a single disk can't sustain a high enough sequential transfer rate, ie non-linear video editing, usually with uncompressed video (not compressed because that requires negligible tranfer rates)
RAID-01/10 is for when you need a RAID-0 array but must deal with precious data that can't be lost
RAID-5 is when you need to deal with vast quantities of data that can't be contained on a drive or two, and which lossing would result in much lost time (ie re-ripping a DVD collection).

None of these are for OS installs. None of them will improve your OS performance, and most will likely hinder it:
http://www.storagereview.com/php/cms...rt=16&range=10

So basically, unless you're building a media server (RAID-5), doing non-linear editing of uncompressed video (RAID-0), or building a server (RAID-1 OS), don't bother with RAID.

For you, if you really want the redundancy for your storage (I would) I would setup the RAID-5 array (preferably with a good hardware RAID card), and then get another drive for the OS/apps, something like a 10000rpm WD Raptor.

[SteinyD]

Thank you for the extended explanation. No, this won't be a dedicated server but probably something I should consider. This will be a PC I sit in front of and do video editing, gaming and storage of video and audio files for distribution on my home network. My primary interest in Raid is to create redundancy. I've lost data too many times. Yes, I burn critical data to DVD but that is just not always practical. I'd rather have the redundancy.

Secondarily, I would want striping (Raid 0) to improve performance. Now, with this machine I'm putting together performance will be an unlikely issue so that is is not required.

With that said, what would you recommend I do?

Regards and thanks again
David

Originally Posted by stanger89

First only the 3ware 9000 series support OCE.



But not hardware RAID-5. What does that mean, well it works like this, the RAID does a XOR calculation on everything written to a RAID-5 array (to create the parity info). On a hardware RAID-5 card, that's done in hardware, so there's no CPU hit writting to the array. In your situation (or with one of the many cheap cards) that task (XOR calculation) is onloaded to your CPU, so there can be a significant CPU hit when writing to the array.



Well, it's theoretically possible for a RAID-10 array to survive 2 disks failing simultaneously. And there's no parity calculations so it 'could' be faster. However, you're comparing basically a 2 disk stripe vs 3 disk stripe+overhead so it's probably a tossup on writes.

One last thing, it sounds as though you'll be using the array as your one and only drive, is that true? IMO that is not a good idea, RAID arrays each have different purposes, but basically they're for doing what's impossible with a single disk. Basically I'd sumarrize them like this:
RAID-1 is for when you CAN'T go down for a second (not true of home PCs generally)
RAID-0 is for when a single disk can't sustain a high enough sequential transfer rate, ie non-linear video editing, usually with uncompressed video (not compressed because that requires negligible tranfer rates)
RAID-01/10 is for when you need a RAID-0 array but must deal with precious data that can't be lost
RAID-5 is when you need to deal with vast quantities of data that can't be contained on a drive or two, and which lossing would result in much lost time (ie re-ripping a DVD collection).

None of these are for OS installs. None of them will improve your OS performance, and most will likely hinder it:
http://www.storagereview.com/php/cms...rt=16&range=10

So basically, unless you're building a media server (RAID-5), doing non-linear editing of uncompressed video (RAID-0), or building a server (RAID-1 OS), don't bother with RAID.

For you, if you really want the redundancy for your storage (I would) I would setup the RAID-5 array (preferably with a good hardware RAID card), and then get another drive for the OS/apps, something like a 10000rpm WD Raptor.

[SteinyD]

I can't tell you how happy I am that this thread went way off topic. The information you guys are providing are of great value .. I'm glad I didn't run to order my parts just yet (except for the NVidia card that is).

With this NVidia card, I'm assuming the Intel based motherboard I've chosen (Asus P5WD2 Premium) is an appropriate match? From what I've read, I believe the support I need is there.

Thanks again!
David

Originally Posted by Crashless

BFG is one of the best NVidia manufaturers. They ship them overclocked and they have the best warrenties available. Now how that particular deal is affected by the OEM box status, I'm not sure. Usually white box deals don't come with support, but I would assume the warenty still applies - I would check that though.

Sorry, I wasn't clear about the memory thing - I'd go with the 512 sticks of 800mhz over the 1gb sticks of 667. Unless you edit features or HUGE files, you'll be fine for now with 1gb, but you _will_ eventually want to upgrade and you don't want to be stuck with slower memory. (disclaimer: I'm only making this recommendation based on your other components - if you're looking at that CPU, and that video card, you HAVE to get the fastest memory available to take advantage of the coin you're spending elsewhere. You don't want to create bottlenecks that are costly to fix.)

I didn't realize that MB had built in RAID 5. Even without hearing anything about it, I'd still say you should definitly go with that, as you were going to use it anyways and you can just select RAID5 instead of 0+1. I'm not as familiar with RAID10. Here's a description of the differences between RAID 0+1 and 1+0 (oh yeah, RAID10=RAID1+0):

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...Level01-c.html

I can't find a RAID 5 explanation right now for some reason, but unless you're editing uncompressed HD video, you'll be fine with RAID 5. Advantages of 1+0 over 5: _slightly_ faster, and you can lose 2 drives if they're on the same part of the mirror (rare). Disadvantages: less space, 50% in fact in a 4 drive configuration.

I think that covers it. Anything I missed?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by SteinyD

Thank you for the extended explanation. No, this won't be a dedicated server but probably something I should consider. This will be a PC I sit in front of and do video editing, gaming and storage of video and audio files for distribution on my home network. My primary interest in Raid is to create redundancy. I've lost data too many times. Yes, I burn critical data to DVD but that is just not always practical. I'd rather have the redundancy.

Firstly, redundancy is a suppliment to backup, not a replacement. Now that that's out of the way

By video editing, I assume you mean hacking commercials, and otherwise messing with recorded video of some sort? Remember, recorded video, even HDTV is under 3MB/sec data rate, so anything beyond a single drive performance isn't likely something you'll need.

I think if you go with a single drive for the OS/apps, and probably scratch data, and then the array for the more static stuff, you'll be good to go.

Secondarily, I would want striping (Raid 0) to improve performance. Now, with this machine I'm putting together performance will be an unlikely issue so that is is not required.

If you want speed for apps and such, what you need to do is reduce latency, that means 10000rpm drives. I'd go with either a Raptor. If you're going to need more than 74GB for transatory data (OS/Apps, temporary editing files, etc) then one of the large 7200rpm drives with 8MB cache would work well.