HTPC's on the cheap with old P4 and Athlon XP systems

[wirednuts]

i had two old pc's both of which people wanted to use as htpcs. of course, this wasnt possible without helping the sluggish cpu, and ive read a lot of places asking if its even possible to play hd video on these old (and usually free) pc's.

the 2600+ nf7-s system i had has an 8400gs pci card in it and 1gb ram, win7. most sd video works fine, but hulu or hd flash is just choppy as heck. even sd hulu didnt work, its just not a fast enough system to do any hulu, which really sucks.

so for the p4 2ghz system, with only 512mb ram, put win7 on it, and added a 3650 agp card ($30 refurb!). night and day difference. everything works, even hulu. 480p is SLIGHTLY choppy, but the hdd is thrashing so i think its just the low ram. 360p plays butter smooth, as does all my 720p content (havent tried 1080p yet, but i would bet some/most work).

the 3650 seems to be the best agp card for the money right now. low power usage, and offloads all video from the cpu without hassle. thing is, new they are like $80, and its hard to find them under $50. that said, i just bought another off ebay for $25 used! for less then $100 i upgraded two old pretty much worthless computers into real home theater machines. just cant beat that!

 

[rockyjohn]

Congratulations. Nice upgrade. You might also be able to find an inexpensive memory upgrade on eBay. For my sister's old laptop with DDR memory, I purchased a 256MB chip for less than $5 - including shipping.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Any way to tell if the 3650 using hardware acceleration for Flash? It didn't when they first implemented it but that could have changed with updates. And what OS were you using for the Athlon system? Flash became pretty broken on XP in somewhere after version 10, a choppy tearing mess in full screen. I wouldn't totally write off the Athlon system before trying a newer OS, that Geforce does accelerate Flash, it just takes Vista or Win7 to do it.

Edit: Oops, 3650 always did support hardware Flash, was thinking of the 2xxx which didn't.

Edit2: Well it looks like that PCI 8400 might be a bottleneck for Flash even on a newer OS.

I have two obsolete PC's I'd love to revive some degree. One's an NF3 with an Athlon X2 and AGP slot and it looks like there's just no way to put a video card in that that will support Flash acceleration with Vista/W7. The other is an NF2 with an Athlon XP and I'm not sure getting an AGP card that handles Flash and installing Vista/W7 is a worthwhile project. I'd love to hear from anyone who tried.

 

[wirednuts]

Any way to tell if the 3650 using hardware acceleration for Flash? It didn't when they first implemented it but that could have changed with updates. And what OS were you using for the Athlon system? Flash became pretty broken on XP in somewhere after version 10, a choppy tearing mess in full screen. I wouldn't totally write off the Athlon system before trying a newer OS, that Geforce does accelerate Flash, it just takes Vista or Win7 to do it.

Edit: Oops, 3650 always did support hardware Flash, was thinking of the 2xxx which didn't.

Edit2: Well it looks like that PCI 8400 might be a bottleneck for Flash even on a newer OS.

I have two obsolete PC's I'd love to revive some degree. One's an NF3 with an Athlon X2 and AGP slot and it looks like there's just no way to put a video card in that that will support Flash acceleration with Vista/W7. The other is an NF2 with an Athlon XP and I'm not sure getting an AGP card that handles Flash and installing Vista/W7 is a worthwhile project. I'd love to hear from anyone who tried.

thats the point of this thread- because i read a lot of people wondering how to keep their old p4 system viable in todays flash world.

so far, from what i can tell, YES the hd3650 will rejuvenate these old machines. i have yet to try the athlon 2600+ system with the 3650, but it is confirmed online that the 8400gs simply doesnt handle video offloading well. plus, the p4 system that has the 3650 in it now is a slower system then the nf2 nf7-s athlon system is. but that p4 rig handles hulu and youtube with ease (and actually, the 8400gs was in that system first, and it wouldnt play hardly any video. i just bought the 3650 for the tv-output, but i find out that it handles much, much more content now).