Home Theater Workstation (HTWS v1.0)

[pacal]

Attempting to build a HTWS that has the horsepower to deliver both on entertainment and productivity.

My concerns are...
a) Do I need the breakout box from CLabs for the optical interface to take full advantage of all the DTS, Dolby 7.1, EAX.... et cetera...?
b) Are two GT's enough for my 42in display or should I run dual 8800GTS SLI?
c) Is it worth waiting around for X48 (SLI?), 700i-series from nVidia?

H T W S v 1 . 0
Sharp AQUOS 42" LC-42D64U LCD
Lian Li PC-C32-B Case
Seasonic M12 SS-700HM 700W PSU
Asus Striker Extreme 680i
Intel Core 2 Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4Ghz CPU
GeiL EvoOne (or) Esoteria.2 8GB PC2-8500 Cas 5-5-5-15
EVGA GeForce 8800GT@700Mhz 512MB Video Card (Dual SLI Config)
Samsung Spinpoint F1 (3 x 1TB)
LG GGW-H20L Lightscribe 4x Super Multi Blueray Disc Rewriter w/SF&BD RTL
Creative Labs X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 (or) X-Fi Fatal1ty Champion Series
MS Windows Vista 64-Bit Ultimate
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme HSF
Logitech MX Revolution, Wireless Mouse
Logitech DiNovo Wireless Keyboard


Thank you for your input,
~Pacal

[pacal]

As great as my HTC TyTn II (cell/pda) is, it sucks trying to digest the internet and all its wonderful media through a 2.8in port-hole... This is what i've been reduced to, 2.8in ;-p for 6+ mo... no wonder the girls never call bback.

starving for si,
pacal

[Lev]

screen size has nothing to do with performance.. its the resolution



2 gt are fine.

[pacal]

I was hoping for more of a response from you tech-heads; but I realize these new-builds are a dime a dozen. I'm not sure what would make this build any more attractive a project unless I included some photos! Ya'll love the eye-candy and bling bling... So stay tuned...

Any memory experts willing to comment on my choice of memory. I have a hard time deciding between 4GB DDR2-800 Cas3 and 8GB DDR2-1066 Cas5.... If I can load Vista's pagefile or system-core into memory, than the 8GB seems like a great option; but I've been away for a while... Not sure if this is even possible with newer vers of Windows.

~Pacal

[Lord AnthraX]

Maybe if your wallet is deep enough, you should look into an I-RAM device.

I'll let the article do the explaining.


http://techreport.com/articles.x/9312/1

[Zytek_Fan]

Looks pretty good :up:

780i is supposed to be coming in the beginning of December...so you could wait until then...

[disruptfam]

looks good i would change the sound card to a auzentech pre-lude though :)

Beats out both the cards you listed in overall sound quality...

Also 2 gt's should be fine on most game's except crysis!

[Zytek_Fan]

Definitely get the Auzen Prelude. :up:

[pacal]

I read an article on the Prelude and the author's assessment was that the card is still really green. Despite being my initial choice, I have to agree at least based on specs. Prelude advertises Dolby Digital Live, DTS Interactive, DTS NEO:PC and EAX all-in-one; but the only thing they deliver with the Prelude is EAX at present and whether the other features will arrive or not is still a matter of debate. Hell if it was easy, I'm sure CLabs would have done it long ago.

I think this is the review:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/2485-auzentech-x-fi-prelude-7-1-review.html

Does anyone know whether its necessary to use an optical cable to acheive the bandwidth necessary for Dolby Digital, DTS NEO:PC and all that other fancy audio stuff? Is SPDIF sufficient enough or does it have to be optical...

~Pacal