Will my computer handle being a hd htpc?

russ9898

russ9898

russ9898

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Joined
27 Dec 2004
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Staffordshire
Hi guys,

I'm upgrading my main rig soon so will have some components spare (theyre getting on a bit however)

How do you think the following would manage as htpc? Would be using mediaportal for the bulk of the media on a clean windows xp install with minimal other servies running other than maybe as acting as a torrent download box.

Maximum i would be playing would be 720p, is the computer going to be good enough for this?
  • AMD Athlon Mobile 2500 (Overlclocked to 2.2ghz)
  • 2gb Dual Channel DDR400 Ram
  • 128mb Geforce 6600GT (AGP 8x)
  • Compro T200 TV Card (Will install additional card or 2 in the near future)

    Hard Drives -
    • 120gb SATA Drive for OS (partitioned into 2, 60gb for os, 60gb for backups)
    • 500gb IDE Drive for Movies (SD & HD) although will prob need to increase that at somepoint
    • 320gb (2x160GB IDE drives in raid) for Music
    • 300gb IDE Drive for TV Shows & TV Recordings
 
I dont think it will play too nicely at 720p. My old P4 3.35GHz, 2GB of DDR460 and a 256mb 7900GS it didnt run it too well at all. Why not try some 720p on it now to make sure?
 
^ive got a couple of 720p clips downloading as we speak, unfortunately bt are kindly throttling the connection again down to 30kb/sec so thought id ask for some opinions in the mean time.
 
I have a very similar setup to yours but with an X800 series graphics card and 720 plays fine with VLC player and Divx.
 
just managed to play a clip of topgun in 720p, i actually had half life installing at the time and a pretty old windows xp install currently with a few services running. Playback was very good, very little in the way of dropped frames.

Will have another play later when the system is a little free'er
 
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