Old Dell P4 2.8.. Use it for HTPC? Can it do everything?

[IamDavid]

Have an old Dell laying around and was thinking about ordering a V.C. w\HMDI output and using it for an HTPC. Anyone know if it will play all types of media? Specificly will it be able to play/keep up with HD content?

Thanks,
David

 

[olmer]

Yes. Everything, but slow. Seriously ? depends on the card you want put in ? i?d say 720p with any card with hdmi, but 1080p with hw h decoder to offload cpu. have you checked if the noise it makes is acceptable for htpc?

 

[JackMDS]

2.8GHz PC with good Video card would do well as media server as long as the OS supports what ever is that you want to do.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: IamDavid
Have an old Dell laying around and was thinking about ordering a V.C. w\HMDI output and using it for an HTPC. Anyone know if it will play all types of media? Specificly will it be able to play/keep up with HD content?

Thanks,
David

Should not be an issue with an ATI/nVidia card which off-loads vc1/h.264 from the cpu.

(and Power DVD or similar codecs)

 

[Skooter]

The problem will be heat. I have a P4 2.6C and the thing can touch 80 degrees centigrade with an aftermarket cooler and arctic silver 5 on it. Those chips just run incredibly hot.

 

[daletkine]

Hi, I'm new to forums, but here's my 2 cents of worth.
I have a single core Athlon 64 @ 2.4GHz with Radeon HD 3870, which has hardware accelleration for H.264 and VC-1. I can run HD DVD and Blu-Ray ok, but it does occasionally stumble and slow down and sometimes downright crash the Power DVD. If you are considering using a 2.8GHz P4, then I would say it won't have enough mussle to pull a 1080p video. My CPU utilization is around 80-100% during movie playback. I believe you will be able to run 1080p video if it is not DRM encumbered, but as for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, you'll need a faster proc. Unless your P4 is a Dual-Core... ^_^

 

[IamDavid]

Originally posted by: olmer
Yes. Everything, but slow. Seriously ? depends on the card you want put in ? i?d say 720p with any card with hdmi, but 1080p with hw h decoder to offload cpu. have you checked if the noise it makes is acceptable for htpc?

Sound won't be an issue. Will be set up behind wall.

The problem will be heat. I have a P4 2.6C and the thing can touch 80 degrees centigrade with an aftermarket cooler and arctic silver 5 on it. Those chips just run incredibly hot.

Didn't think about that at all. Will have to check it out. Thanks

daletkine- Thanks for the input. Have you tried any other software beside Power DVD?


Any possibilities of this running UBUNTU any better? Haven't ever used it on a older PC. Love it on my main rig and laptop.

 

[0roo0roo]

power use is bad if you plan on leaving it on

 

[daletkine]

IamDavid- no, I only use PowerDVD these days. I used to use WinDVD8, but I didn't like the interface of it. But the UVD acceleration is working, because if I use my onboard video GeForce 6100, which has no acceleration for HD, the CPU is at 100% and it's dropping frames a lot.

Also, I'm sure the Ubuntu will run just fine, I have Ubuntu installed on Pentium3 # 866MHZ, o/c to 910Mhz, 256MB DDR133 ad GeForce4, runs perfectly fine, but a little slow. Actually, it has problems running video 720*480, but if I add my Audigy 2 ZS, it runs the video just fine. It seems the onboard audio is just not accelerating anything.

Good luck with your project!