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rrussell
Ace
Posts: 3,306
Join Date: Jul, 2004
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« on: May 25, 2006, 07:13:17 PM » |
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Since I upgraded (?) to an A64 system, my trusty ol' uber-silent 200N has been relegated to paperweight status. Also, unrelated to the poor guy, I've been growing more and more pissed off at the mini-itx slow piece of crap system I'm using as a "media center" (mostly a PVR client). It finally occurred to me that (a) the 200N wouldn't look half bad in the stereo rack, (b) it's a darned sight faster than the pathetic epia 9000 cpu, and (c) I can finally maybe play some divx files on the tv, then! Not only THAT, but it can encode dolby digital output real-time! NOT ONLY THAT, BUT I COULD PLAY SOME NIFTY GAMES ON THE HOME THEATER! It's a win-win-win-win! Now just to eke out some time to DO it  |
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fobis
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Join Date: Nov, 2004
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« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2006, 11:36:24 PM » |
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Sweet. Hope that works out well for you.  |
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jebo_4jc
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Join Date: Apr, 2005
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« Reply #2 on: June 06, 2006, 03:58:30 PM » |
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/Pats trusty 200n HTPC :-)
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MrbLOB9000
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« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2006, 02:28:23 AM » |
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haha, nice, good to see you realized it BEFORE buying a faster HTPC!  What Athlon 64 system did you end up going with? Saw you looking for mATX stuff a while ago, but didn't know what you ended up with. |
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rrussell
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« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2006, 04:32:19 PM » |
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Yeah, I had it in my sig until they redid the site... Biostar TForce 6100 939 AMD X2 4400+ with one of those Zalman flowery coolers, I forget which one... 2gig geil value DDR400 XFX 7800GT overclocked and an Artic Cooler 5 HD, dvd burner, etc etc in an X-QPack with an Enermax Liberty 400W psu. My conclusion, after dropping a grand or so on this puppy, is 1. The 200N was a damned fine machine, and I needn't have been unhappy with it, and 2. The extra core in the X2 isn't worth as much as simply getting a faster CPU to begin with. I also miss the firewire port  |
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MrbLOB9000
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« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2006, 09:12:52 PM » |
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You were unhappy with your 200n?
for me I see a big differance but I do a lot of things at once. If your mainly doing one thing at a time or playing games that aren't smp enabled then you probably wouldn't see much of an improvement over getting a single core of the same clock speed.
What do you use firewire for? I don't know anyone that uses firewire to tell you the truth.
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jebo_4jc
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« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2006, 09:20:47 PM » |
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I have an external hard drive that uses firewire and/or USB2, as well as a digital camcorder.
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rrussell
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« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2006, 09:54:14 PM » |
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I wasn't so much unhappy with it, that I got restless since I'd run out of things I felt like modding.
...plus I was anticipating Oblivion, and wanted to get a new machine that would really let me take advantage of it.
The firewire, like jebo, is for external drives - I have a bank of them attached to my PVR recording stuff, and I just like it ever so much more than USB for that sort of thing.
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MrbLOB9000
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« Reply #8 on: June 13, 2006, 08:29:43 PM » |
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I meant people I know personally in real life. I know people do use firewire somewhere and the devices do exist! doesn't your external HD have both USB2.0 and Firewire? Firewire is faster in real life (spec is slower but it has lower overhead on the protocol) but not hugely. |
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rrussell
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« Reply #9 on: June 14, 2006, 04:11:02 PM » |
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yup, most of them have combo interfaces. I found that, in real life, USB2.0 would bring the machine to its knees during large transfers such as writing and reading at the same time from the same drive, whereas firewire keeps things running more than smoothly. And don't even TRY to defrag a 250gb USB drive if you want to use the machine in the next day or so.
It's a no-brainer for me, and I got spoiled...
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rrussell
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« Reply #10 on: June 15, 2006, 01:20:59 PM » |
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LOL - NOT.
I finally got the 200N plugged into the stereo system and the SPDIF hooked up. Trying to get it configured led me down a path that ended up in TheFrontSpeakersAren'tWorkingAnymoreLand, population ME.
Yep - rear work fine, center and woofer work fine, and the only reason I can think that I didn't track this down before (I THOUGHT it was odd that the past couple of dvds I played I couldn't hear very well...) is not wanting to even think that it could be true.
Now, the GOOD news is that the receiver has both "A" and "B" speakers in front - and the "B" work just fine! (yaaaay) So while it would probably behoove me to get the thing fixed, it ain't gonna happen right now. I wasn't looking forward to unplugging the maze of cables and wires from the back of it anyway.
Next steps:
1. Install SageTV client
2. Get my universal remote control working with it
La la la...
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