HTPC Upgrade

poggy · 28 Nov 2007 at 10:50

Hi all I hope you can help me out, I'm upgrading some of the components in my HTPC and it would be great if anyone with HD knowlage could give th spec a once over and let me know if it will play 1080p without problems.

I already have an Abit motherboard AN-M2HD, amd2 x2 4000+ cpu, optical drives, case, psu, all in wonder x800, 2gb ocz mem.

I was thinking of upgrading to these

OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2VU6674GK)

Gigabyte ATI Radeon 2600 Pro Silent Fanless 512MB DDR2 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GV-RX26P512H)

Samsung SpinPoint S 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD250HJ)

I have network about 750gb worth of network storage so i'll be using that to stream SD tv and films, music etc to the htpc and i'd use the 250gb spinpoint to only use to watch HD movies, i think i might get away with streaming HD TV.

My main concern is the GPU is the one I've selected good enough for HD @ 1080p, should i go for a better one as i couldn't see anything that would suggest it can output sound as well as video via the HDMI cable.

Any suggestions or opinions would be great.

Oh and has anyone used a usb to parallel cable? the abit doesn't have a parallel portand the VFD i have uses one, just wondering if that would work?

Thanks
Ginge

badbob · 28 Nov 2007 at 13:10

ATI X800 is fine for HTPC use, I'm using a ATI X300 @1080p and can playback h264 1080p easily. You've got a dual core CPU so that's ok.

poggy · 28 Nov 2007 at 13:19

badbob said:
ATI X800 is fine for HTPC use, I'm using a ATI X300 @1080p and can playback h264 1080p easily. You've got a dual core CPU so that's ok.

I've tried playback on both the card and onboard, it's kinda choppy in places as in it stutters now and then. Could be that i have an ide hard drive?

badbob · 28 Nov 2007 at 13:22

Could be a codec problem, are you playing back Blu-Ray/HD DVD movies from optical drives, or just files downloaded and on your HD?

What codecs do you have installed?

danswan · 28 Nov 2007 at 13:41

Can vouch for the X800, mine happily plays 1080p content, thats with a 3700+ (single core) and 1GB memory.

poggy · 28 Nov 2007 at 13:42

I have Vista Ultimate 64bit and i'm using cccp

I'm not playing HD-DVD or Blu-Ray but i'd like to at some point. Right now the HD movies are on my HTPC and i stream the rest of my SD stuff.

I guess it could be a codec issue as when i view any movie/tv ep in windows media player it comes up fine and as normal bar the stuttering in the HD stuff but when i watch it through MCE anything with light shinning on it or light itself has black bit on it

cheers