1.7GHz P4M w AOPENi855gmemlf not good enough for HTPC!?

[fabola]

I use the Hauppauge PVR250 and got about 60% cpu load! Its working (after change the internal sound card to SB Live) but it feels slow and dropped some dropped frames on live TV viewing. Graphics card is ATI radeon 7000, memory 1GB. The software I tried beside the latest Hauppage drivers/Win2k application is Snapstream beyond TV, GBPVR, Medio, Media portal. Win2k had the lowest CPU load so far - actually 30% for my old PVR350 and 60% for PVR250! The other applications is all about 60% cpu load on booth cards.
GBPVR is the application I like most, the only problem is to get the channel guide to working.

What is wrong and how to go on? Im thinking of building a new computer using Athlon 64 3GHz but it will be a lot hotter. Also the Hauppauge card gets quite hot, specially the old PVR350.

[ckolivas]

Powersaving features throttling the cpu? They can make it look like you're using a heck of a lot of cpu when in actual fact the cpu is only running at 600Mhz. Oh and I assume you're on a pentiumM, not a pentium4M as they are different things and the p4M is a cooker and doesnt come in a 1.7.

[fabola]

I checket and its does not trottle, running at constant 1.7GHz. And yes its a Pentium M.

[Mikael]

How does it play WMV HD at 1080 res? I happen to have an 1.7GHz P-M and it plays those things fine with no dropped frames (although the CPU utilisation is uite high). The processor in question shouldn't really have any problems with the tasks you're describing.

[fabola]

I just made an new OS installation with Windows media center. After a lot of trouble with graphics drivers, dvr recorder software and stupid mce- processes running all the time and blocking the Win2k app to start I finally got it working just fine at 13-18% CPU load! So no problem with hardware!