DVR System Upgrade to Win 7 and Non Intel / Nvidia mainboard

[pochrist 0]

I currently have a working DVR setup using the

NV5000 on and AMD / Nforce 3 Main-board running Win xp Pro

 

It's been running fine over a year now but I'm looking to give the Main-board to my 6 yr Daughter and upgrade the DVR to:

 

Win 7 Pro 32bit (prefer 64)

Gigabyte GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H (North Bridge AMD 785G & South Bridge AMD SB710)

With a AMD AM2+ CPU

 

After reading Avermedia's documentation...

 

They recommend ONLY INTEL on ONLY Main-boards with Nvidia chipsets (perhaps they haven't heard of a little company called AMD) or the lesser known companies like ATI (aka AMD) or Via.

 

They need to get out from under Intels thumb and make products that WILL SUPPORT other boards....

 

OK Sorry for the rant, just have this thing about narrow minded companies....

 

But the Question is Has anyone had problems or even tried this or a similar Setup. Thanks

[Soundy 1]

"Recommended" doesn't necessarily mean "ONLY works with"... usually it means, "this is what we've tested it with and know for a fact that it works well".

 

That said, the main thing to consider when going to Win7 is not just whether the software runs (which it probably will), but whether the hardware has driver support (which is much less likely). Unless there's a burning need for >3.5GB RAM, there's probably little need to go to 64-bit, and even less need to go to Win7 for a DVR. Remember, a DVR 's OS doesn't need to be pretty and friendly and latest-and-greatest... it NEEDS to be efficient and stable.

[tomcctv 190]

this might be of interest. http://www.avermedia.com/AVerDiGi/Product/Detail.aspx?Id=131&Tab=SystemRequirement#Motherboard

[Soundy 1]

Interesting link there, tom...

 

Based on Intel suggestion , for NONE MicrosoftR WindowsR XP Operation Systems, Hyper-Threading must be disabled in the system BIOS Setup program ( see FAQ for procedure ) for our DVR products.

 

I wonder if this is useful for DVRs in general?

 

For the most stable security DVR, we strongly recommend NOT using VIA/SiS/ALi chipsets and SiS VGA chips with our products due to their severe limitation of the chipset design.

 

Well, that certainly addresses pochrist's concerns - for Avermedia at least, it's not a matter of being "under Intel's thumb" but a matter of not trusting the stability of those other chipsets.

 

I see they DO list some AMD motherboards and ATI chipsets that are tested and known working with their systems.

 

This is nothing unusual, of course - back when I was working IT support for a digital-arts school, 8-9 years ago, we had a couple of high-end digital video workstations (Discreet, Avid) that were very, VERY specific about the motherboards they would work on - not just chipsets, but only a very few motherboards that would work with them AT ALL.

 

I can hear the "Well, I have a gaming machine using those chips and it works great" but this sort of video processing is a whole different matter - gaming needs its power in bursts and a lot of it rests on the GPU; DVRs need to do CONSTANT heavy processing and are much more I/O intensive on a consistent basis. A weak I/O chipset is as deadly to a DVR as a weak GPU is to a gaming system.

[pochrist 0]

Well I appreciate the comments and suggestions, I will though give the newer board a test run and just for giggles try Windows 7 as well. I have nothing to lose other then a few recordings of the outside of my house.

 

I do appreciate the point brought up about comparing the DVR Hardware requirements to a Gaming system. In my case I compare it to a CAD workstation as a CAD Drafter and PC Tech I have a very good grasp of the needs for my "Tool" and often use the "Gaming System" as an analogy as well. Solid Modeling, High Quality Rendering and Animation require a powerful system and a good CAD Video card to do the allot of the work. No gaming card could ever compete, as Games are based on a "Hollow world" where image maps are applied to faces. Unlike CAD Cards which are calculating Solid, multi-layered objects and intricate details.

 

Which brings me to my point of utter confusion with Avermedia, for the price they charge for their products to only certify them to run flawlessly on ONE CPU manufacturer and ONE Video manufacturer screams laziness, not a well designed product. Its like saying your product is only guaranteed to work under very narrow "lab created" scenarios.

 

Again this is why I did ask originally because I had read others had success "practicing Alchemy" outside the Avermedia Laboratories.

 

But this is just my opinion and my needs are not as great as those who design and install systems that keep them off the unemployment line.

 

But no matter where you stand it all comes down to Electricity flowing through silcon based hardware that can only understand Hexadecimal down to Binary code, which is in essence is 1011 0110 or better yet On or OFF.

 

Thanks for the time and the lending your ear to my rant.

[Soundy 1]

Which brings me to my point of utter confusion with Avermedia, for the price they charge for their products to only certify them to run flawlessly on ONE CPU manufacturer and ONE Video manufacturer screams laziness, not a well designed product. Its like saying your product is only guaranteed to work under very narrow "lab created" scenarios.

 

What should they do if they find other systems to be problematic then? Spend excessive resources to work around someone else's design problems? Sometimes you start building things one way, things work fine for several hardware revisions, then you find newer hardware has problems... is it cost-effective to go back and redo everything from scratch to attempt to MAYBE make it work on that hardware, or do you just say, "this isn't very good hardware, we don't recommend using it"?

 

Look at it this way, how much more pissed off would you be if they DIDN'T list the supported hardware, you bought something else that they know doesn't work well, and then you had all kinds of problems, only to THEN call them and have them say, "Oh yeah, it doesn't work very well with that, we don't recommend it."?

[rory 0]

Which brings me to my point of utter confusion with Avermedia, for the price they charge for their products to only certify them to run flawlessly on ONE CPU manufacturer and ONE Video manufacturer screams laziness, not a well designed product. Its like saying your product is only guaranteed to work under very narrow "lab created" scenarios.

Its pretty much the same with almost ALL DVR cards. Its a given in this industry, I haven't touched an AMD system in years, no issues though. There is a reason why many people charge to build systems specifically for a certain purpose, such as in this case, a DVR, because they know what can run it (supposedly anyway). Lets face it, Windows 7 runs like crap on a 600Mhz CPU system, but XP runs, well, good ... so if thats the case ... im going to tell you run XP .... and if you choose to run Windows 7 .. you are on your own boss.

 

PS. if you run Linux, even better!!

[rory 0]

related threads:

 

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20177

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18787

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=19075

(there are many more like these)

 

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19622

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=8059

 

Just for info, I actually had a Geovision GV250 running on AMD before (my old old AMD HP) but that was their most basic card, the others typically had issues with the Via and Sis chipsets.