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#11
Well... the new HD5770 works perfectly in the ASUS P5Q3 machine. So the card is perfectly fine. Not defective.DSperber said:
I think I will perhaps give it one more try in the Supermicro machine... or maybe I'll just give up, since I have invented an alternative workaround solution.
An option is to literally swap physical machines, reversing their locations in my house. This would also involve transferring the guts of both machines (other than motherboard, CPU and memory) to the opposite because the Supermicro machine is currently my HTPC.
So I'd only have to remove 2 TV tuner cards and 2 large SATA hard drives from that Supermicro machine, and transplant it into the other ASUS machine which will have the new HD5770 in it and become the HTPC going forward. The other 2 hard drives can remain with that machine in its new location.
In turn, 1 hard drive from the ASUS machine will need to be removed and transplanted into the Supermicro machine.
This isn't so bad a transplant surgery at all, now that I come to think of it. Both machines are LGA775 3.0Ghz DualCore CPU's with 4GB of memory, but in fact the ASUS machine has faster memory and a higher-grade Intel CPU, since it was built about a year after the Supermicro machine was built. Otherwise, they're very very similar.
The only wrinkle is the whole lot of copy-protected content from WMC which is currently living on a partition of the Supermicro machine, which can only be played back by that very Supermicro machine (mobo + CPU) since it was recorded by WMC running on that machine. When the hard drives get reversed that partition will be living in the other ASUS machine, but I can still get to it from the Supermicro machine (and its WMC) in its new location. And I can reconfigure my two DMA2100 extenders so that the existing WMC on the Supermicro machine can be used to "view down" that backlog of existing recordings (since the ASUS machine cannot do that, because of encryption) using one of my HDTVs.
In the meantime, I will set up WMC to run on the new HTPC, i.e. the ASUS machine, producing new recordings into a newly created folder on one of my large hard drives which is getting transplanted into the ASUS machine. And I will thus be able to use that WMC to view my normal new ongoing recordings on my other HDTV.
In other words, it's a relatively minor hardware transfer to accomplish the swap, in order to get the ASUS machine to become the HTPC going forward as well as host the new HD5770 video card to support my two LCD monitors via DVI.
And I'll still be able to use existing WMC on the relocated Supermicro machine, to simply view down all current existing recordings in the existing "My Recordings" folder.
Yes, there are a few more consequences of the machine swap, such as printer and scanner at one location, and a different printer at the other location. And there's associate application software and drivers for these devices, but they're just USB and not an issue.
I think this is very feasible, gives me everything I want and need, allows me to use the HD5770, and costs me nothing. If anything, the new ASUS HTPC machine will actually be somewhat stronger than the Supermicro machine was as HTPC.
I think this is what I will do this weekend.
Last edited by dsperber; 25 Jan 2012 at 00:14.
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