What should I upgrade to?

[Xiahou]

My thinking was that I could overclock the 3800+ to get even better performance. However, now that I have a fat tax refund check on the way, I'm thinking I'll probably just build a new system and hand my current system down to the wife who'd definitely appreciate the extra performance over her AthlonXP 2800+.

I'm very much in the research phase, but I'm leaning towards the AMD X2 CPUs. Unless there's a big difference in price to performance, I'd rather stick with them over Intel. For vid cards, I've been a fan of ATI recently- but I'd be entirely willing to go Nvidia if it made more sense in a cost to performance setting. Anyone know any good mobos to go with? I suppose if I'm getting an Nvidia GPU, an nforce board would be the clear choice- but what about ATI?

[BDC]

A 24" iMac!

You know you want it. With eyeTV so you can watch flawless tv on it.

[Xiahou]

A 24" iMac!

You know you want it. With eyeTV so you can watch flawless tv on it.

Pffft. You know how much PC I could buy for that much money?

Besides, I already have a fully networked DVR PC.

[x-dANGEr]

Pffft. You know how much PC I could buy for that much money?

Besides, I already have a fully networked DVR PC.

Is that as good as it sounds?

[Xiahou]

Is that as good as it sounds?

I like it. The video quality is nearly indistinguishable from a live cable feed. The only problem I have is some minor blurring during full screen left-right pans- and I suspect that is at least in part due to the way it's hooked to my TV (S-video, stepped down to composite via adapter). I have 3 tuners installed, meaning I can record 3 shows simultaneously and have HD space for about 30hrs of programming.

My main box is hooked to my 32inch SDTV and completely operated (including music and DVD playback) by an RF remote. I can watch recorded shows in WMP on any computer in my apartment via file sharing and have the option of hooking up satellite PCs to other TVs and playing TV from the central PC via 54Mbps wireless. It pretty much covers all your standard TIVO-like functions... on screen guide, automatic recordings, ect. The PC also had an onboard SPDIF out, which I hooked to my surround system and allows for full 5.1 playback of DVDs. All in all, a nice setup.