Cheap HTPC

ash_91 · 9 Mar 2008 at 17:46

Dont want to go amd as planning on just upgrading board + ram + gfx now, and I use htpc as it is actually my standard bedroom pc in full atx case so can overclock nicely.

Going by what cyclopopcicle has said my idea looks like it will be alright, to upgrade the cpu at a later date.

@ cyclopopcicle: What motherboard are you using?

cyclopopcicle · 9 Mar 2008 at 18:25

Intel 915G Express

its in an elonex artisan lxd htpc and is as standard apart from the extra memory (came with 512mb) and the 3450 card that i put in 2 weeks ago

ash_91 · 9 Mar 2008 at 18:44

Ohh right cheers, what card were you using before the 3450 and how did it cope?

cyclopopcicle · 9 Mar 2008 at 18:48

it had the ATI Radeon X300 SE, it coped with avi/divx stuff but was jumpy with .MKV files

ash_91 · 9 Mar 2008 at 22:41

Thanks everyone but I think I have found a piece of software that may do the job, CoreAVC.

Do you think this will do me untill i can afford an upgrade?

ubern00b · 9 Mar 2008 at 23:31

CoreAVC is a more efficient decoder (the most efficient) but it depends what codec your currently using as to how much better it may be.

Be aware also that a 3450 will only hardware accellerate compliant x264 streams. That means 1080p encoded using Profile [email protected] or if using the new MediaPlayerClassic with its own DXVA codec, ANY 720p stream will be hardware accellerated.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17850929