HTPC System

[BassBomb]

Hello,

How well will this machine serve for HTPC needs. It will be using MyTheatre to watch HD from Satellite (I am guessing this is 720P)

My friend uses a AMD 6000+ w/ 7600GT

I have a P4 3.0GHZ w/ HT along with a Asus 7900GS (512mb ram at the moment, but I have spare ram up to 1GB that can be used)

How well will this machine work? I tried a 1080P trailer and it caved fast in WMP.

 

[heyheybooboo]

HD from satellite most likely has a lower birate than a 1080p trailer.

You need to enable hardware acceleration of the 7900gs. Install MyTheatre (I'm not familiar with it) as it will probably have the necessary codecs. I'm a fanboy of cyberlink PowerDVD and never had any problems or conflict with video playback or OTA/cable/sat HD content.

The woods are full of codec packages, filters and players depending upon the content you wish to play. Do a little homework or download a massive codec pack from a palce like Free Codecs ...

 

[BassBomb]

Are you saying I should be fine, because the 7900GS can pick up the slack with encoding?

Bump for more thoughts

 

[Fallen Kell]

My HTPC had a 7800 GTX in it and was able to deal with 1080p for most things, however, it could not handle the H.264 encoded material (with an AMD 4400+ X2 CPU). None of the 7x series of Nvidia boards can decode that encoder formate, you need a 8x series card for that. I recently upgraded to a 8800GT and it now can handle the format.

I will tell you one thing now, you want a QUIET system. I wish I could get mine quieter, but my case has a VERY restricted intake and I had to put a high speed fan on it to get any kind of air-flow into the case. I have been looking for a replacement case for the last year, but ALL of them have similar problems. My dream case would be a full ATX compatible, minimum 4 hard drive slots, 2 CD/DVD drives, a 120mm intake, and a 120mm exhaust fan, in the pizza style box format. Yes, I know it will be tall, but it will not be any taller than my amplifier block, which is rack mountable as a 6u unit (it is 7 separate 300W amplifier units which have an integrated control unit for powering them all on/off at the same time, and indicator leds for failures, overload, or normal running). The thing weighs 300lbs!!! And my HTPC sits just 2 shelves above this monster, so I don't CARE about it being tall enough to fit 120mm fans!!!

 

[ZoNtO]

Antec NSK2480?

OP: You would want a card with either PureVideo2, or something from ATI's new lineup of 38xx or 36xx series cards that has UVD. Check anandtech's comparison on them, but they both will give you decoding of h.264 and the vc1 or whatever it is that Blu Ray uses. There was a post on the forums here that UVD wasn't an open spec or something, so PureVideo may be supported a bit better, but with my 3850 I get about 5-10% cpu usage on my 4 cores watching 1080p trailers.