Cheap HTPC possible?

[razor2025]

I recently got a sweet deal on Dell outlet and got a E510 for $310 shipped. It came with 256mb of DDR2 and 80GB WD drive. It has P4 521 (Prescott) CPU. It also has DVD/CD-RW. Now, I already own a self-built rig that I use for my typical task, schoolwork, net, and games. I was thinking of buying a cheap PCI-E video card with HDTV out (component out) and use this rig as cheapish HTPC. I already have a spare Leadtek XP2000 tuner and Chaintech AV710 soundcard.

So.. what I'm thinking is

buy a cheapo 256mb DDR2 to up the total to 512. Is 512mb enough for HTPC?
~$20ish

buy a 6200TC PCI-E card with Component out
~$50-60ish

So, with that in mind, would this $400 HTPC be any good?

 

[kurt454]

512 should be enough for video playback. I would go for more video card if you are planning on outputting to an HDTV. A 6600 card would have plenty of horsepower.

 

[razor2025]

Is 6600 really neccesary to output? I thought that 6200 should have enough video decoding power to serve its purpose.

 

[kurt454]

If you use VMR9 to render the picture, it uses the card's 3D graphics pipeline to render the picture. A 6200 is considered OK for SDTV, but a 6600 is considered minimum for HDTV. Purevideo using VMR9 is gorgeous. You might can get by with less card if you use overlay?

 

[weeber]

Kurt is right, a 6200 is fine for SDTV using overlay. Heck, I'm using a FX5200 on my SDTV with overlay. But it may be worth your time and money and look into upgrading to a 6600 level card. You get more PureVideo features, and you have more horsepower for using VMR9 which is supposed to look better.