Will this setup work for Sage TV with HD Tuners?

[jptaz]

I am working on plans for a new SageTV Server / HD Play back machine.

I have read several conflicting statements on VMR9 Performance on Video Cards and SageTV.

What I want to be able to do is the following:

Wtach SD and HD Content using VMR9 at 1280 x 720 via DVI to my HD TV
or
Wtach SD and HD using VMR9 at 1280 x 720 via DVI to my Projector

For Simplisity sake a dual DVI card would probably be best and I am hoping I can use either a clone mode of the video driver or configure girder to enable/disable the windows desktop on the two displays, probably the latter for performance reasons. Unfortunately I only have AGP so that limits some of my options.

The Main Sage TV Server / Playback machine / Server 4 external SageTV Clients:

Mother board: Giga-Byte GA-7N400 Pro2 (Rev 2.x)
Processor: AMD XP 3200+
Memory: 1 GB PC3200 RAM (Not Purchased yet)
AGP Video: Unknown Video Card (Not Purchased yet)
Two Avermedia A180 HD Tuners (Not Purchased yet)
One Hauppauge PVR 500 Dual Tuner Connected via Coax to basc Cable
One Hauppauge PVR 250 Connected via SVideo to a Digital Cable Box Actisys IR Blaster
Manage 3 Network Encoders on another box each with a PVR 250 Connected to Digital Cable Boxes controlled by a USB UIRT.

For Storage:
3Ware 9500S-8 Raid SATA Controller (Not Purchased yet)
Eight 300 GB drives in a single RAID 5 configuration (~1.9 TB) (Not Purchased yet)

The Secondary Network encoder / SageTV Client / SageTVClient Host for 2 MediaMVPs

Mother board: Giga-Byte VAXP
Procssore: AMD XP 2000+
Memory: 1 GB PC2700 RAM

Three Hauppauge PVR 250 Connected to Digital Cable Boxes controlled by a USB UIRT (3 instances of SageRecorder as network encoders which will write RAID on other server via a 1394 network directly connected to Server).

Does this seem like a good solution for SD/HD Recording and HD playback?
Will the AMD XP 3200+ be able to handling Recording 6 SD streams / 2 HD Streasm / Playback HD / Server 4 other SageTV Cleints with SD content?

I know the SD recording should not be a problem since the main system can currently record 6 SD streams and use between 8% and 20% CPU recording to 3 Drives. And even with 3 clients watching SD CPU only jumps to betwen 10% and 30%. The Big concern is VMR9 performance / HD Playback Performance on top of those tasks. I am guessing that HD Recording will not be an issue. will the 3Ware RAID be able to handle that many worst writes and reads or am I better off with my current setup with lots of drives where I do not have so much concurrency? Typically when recording I am only writing at most 2 shows per drive.

Also what is the size of Typical HD Shows?

Should I consider Spending the extra money and getting a new processor and Dual PCI x16 board and Switch to an PCI x16 Video card and the Areca PCI x8 120 Raid card for improved Storage bandwidth? I currently think this route would be over kill since I don't need to be able to push a large amount of data to or from the RAID Writing 6 SD streams a 3.25GB/HR and figure 2 HD Streams at 8GB/HR that only breaks down to 11 MB a second, which I have to believe a Hardware based controller from 3Ware should be able to manage even in Random Write pattern, especially if I make my stripe size small enough so that it does not have to recalculate the parity as frequently.

Thanks,
John