I want to speed up my PC too, I built it like 4 or 5 yrs ago, time to upgradeh: Also trying to become fully WinXP MCE 2005 compliant, gonna look into getting an HDTV VC too.

What would be the choice Processor at the moment? P4, AMD?

I just emailed pioneer about the problem. The real problem is I have 8x media (ritek hub-printable)that I can't burn higher than 4x on, haven't tried 12 or 16x media. Don't know if it's bad media or the burner.

 

now youre talking about htpc

http://www.google.com/search?q=htpc

 

I'd go with an ABIT AN8-Ultra mother board.
AMD Venice or X2 core. Whatever you can afford.
At least 1gb of DDR400 ram, a good name brand too.
At least a Nvidia 6600 vid card.

 

Yeah I want it to be able to do all kinds of stuff, the Xbox 360 acts as a media extender, so I can watch the stuff I record on the PC thru the 360 without having the PC hooked up in the same room, and it doesn't look like it's playing thru a PC. I don't need the fastest PC but I'd like it to run smoothly and handle things without any hiccups.

I plan on having a couple 200GB HDD and use the PC as a tivo, maybe with dual HDTV tuners on it, and also for my music. Hell I'd hook it into my houses lighting and stuff too if I knew how

 

its not your burner thats not letting you burn faster than 4x, its your settings on the computer...the data transfer speed on your computer to the data transfer speed on your burner are at the recommended level to burn with no skips....when you have a dvd to burn, the computer has a speed limit to transfer the file. at that same second the burner has to burn the files to the dvd at the speed of the tranfer...once the burner starts to burn faster than what the computer feeds it you tend to have errors and failures on your burn.

 

it's a system bottleneck as in slow FSB or something right?

 

my p4 1.3 with 128mb can burn 8x dvds just fine :dunno:

either your burner is crapping out, or youre using crappy media.

 

Ritek media is good, maybe it was a bad batchh:

 

Check out my setup, it's relatively cheap and is a good gaming machine. HL2 and Doom 3 is crisp and smooth.

DFI LanParty N4 Ultra-D (has onboard sound) - $118
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ - $134
2x OCZ PC3200 dual channel 512mb RAM - $90
XFX 6600GT - $150

I reused some parts like my DVD burner, case, PSU (mine is a 450w by the way). Gonna get a new monitor in a couple weeks though... But yeah so far I'm rocking this setup.

It's air-cooled right now with a Zalman 7700 cpu fan, 2 exhaust fans and 2 intake fans. With that I'm able to overclock my CPU to 2.6. Haven't overclocked my GPU yet though, as I see no need. I may try watercooling soon though so it's not totally out of sight

edit: I also do a lot of 3D work on it and it hasn't failed me yet.

 

do you know (or know how to get) the media code. I checked the media lists at videohelp.com and 8x ritek's recieved mixed reviews h: