help with upgrade

Hi,

I have a computer which is used only for video surveillance. It processes about 8 video streams (from cameras) simultaneously. But it often gets stuck or delays the processing by few seconds. The CPU usage in Task Manager fluctuates between 85-100%.

The specs for this machine are:
Intel 845G motherboard
Celeron 2.4 Ghz
512 MB of memory DDR 333

Currently it uses onboard (Intel extreme) graphics.

Should I upgrade to a Pentium 4 processor or go for a discrete graphics card like Geforce fx 5200?

I figured that buying a seperate graphics card would reduce the load on the cpu and eliminate the lag I am experiencing.

Please let me know what is my best option here.


Thank you

to my knowledge video streams and the like are proccesor thing and arent really affected by graphics cards.

if i were in you position get a true P4 (not celeron) at say like 3.0ghz and put that in.

but this is just a guess so i would wait for some more opinions

Celeron processors are very weak, I would definately bet on that being the problem. I don't think a video card will help that much. Most of your lag is coming from the processor bottleneck. I would get the fastest p4 chip for my motherboard and add another 512 ram. Ideally if you could afford it, I would upgrade the mobo too and get the 820/830/840 series with at least 512mb ddr2 memory, preferably 1gig. The 800 series do quite well with video.

forget socket 478 if ur getting a new mobo. 478 is dead!

so its either intel with 775 or amd with 939, tho amd is due to
change sockets much sooner then intel, so my 2 cents would go
towards intel and 775.

Remember the time the poster said he was on a budget?

If you go the new mobo route, I would definately go with the 600 series processor. I wouldn't recommend the Sempron for video capture. I love AMD and in most cases would recommend. But for your application I would not. Semprons are basically the Celeron equiv. in the AMDs all be it a little better than the Celeron. If you decide to go AMD I would get the Athlon 64 939 processor. Like the AMD 3200+ 939 Venice, you can get for around $169.00 from NewEgg. But in the price range you are looking at the best bet would be the 600 series. In that price range it has the best overall performance for video capture.

Well "tard". He is the one who mentioned possibly getting a 600 series not me. I merely agreed that would be a good processor, so shove it.

For multiple threads/programs, prescott hyperthreading would probably be best.

$150! that's quite a friend. that's a pretty good deal, considering otherwise youd have to spend that on a CPU alone. My only concern is that ddr333...but i think it will be capable of handling your work. you could always try overclocking since he has a barton, though.

OK, what works good for me is a P4 630. I'd say depending on your budget get 640/650 if possible. For motherboard, get the 915P chipset and put in a lowish end GeForce6 series, e.g a 6200TC would be excellent.
Or if you really must get integrated graphics for some unbeknown reason then get a LGA775 motherboard on the 915G chipset.

As for memory, 1GB (2x512MB) dual channel DDR400 would be ideal. Or DDR2, just for sanity's sake.

Do integrated graphics not run off the processor power and use the systems main memory? Cos its just that the last thing you want is the graphics to be hogging a bunch of your system resources. Read my siggy to know how I know this.

I just wouldn't like it to be a problem in one of my systems.
And once again, do you really want to waste half/most of your PCI's bandwidth on your graphics subsystem, when you may want to be using it for something else, when you could just throw in a 6200TC PCI-E in for about $6 more than a crappy GF4 MX or radeon PCI card?

hmm you should be able to do that system for about $650-750, not extremely expensive.