Upgrade Asus EAH3450 for HTPC

[Van G]

Piecing together an HTPC and would like to upgrade the current Asus EAH3450 because it didn't really do HD video well when I was using it in Win XP as my desktop.

Setup:
Win 7 64
Asus A8N-E ver 2
Athlon X2 2800

Req:
passive cooling
1080p hd playback (no gaming)
hdmi out

 

[Van G]

My options are somewhat limited for PCI-E 16x

Might have to stick with what I have and look for DIY Combo down the road for a whole system upgrade.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My friend is using an HD3450 fine on his machine, although I don't think it's capable of flash HW accel, he uses a quad-core Intel cpu. Plays 1080P MKVs just fine though.

 

[Van G]

I'll give it a go.

 

[Bryf50]

My options are somewhat limited for PCI-E 16x

No they aren't. Any PCI-E video card will work in your computer regardless of version. PCI-E is backwards and forwards compatible.

 

[Slugbait]

My friend is using an HD3450 fine on his machine, although I don't think it's capable of flash HW accel...

That X2 3200 also isn't sufficient for flash HW accel, at least not in full-screen mode. I have an X2 4200+ in my secondary HTPC, and Hulu at full screen stutters a lot...turning off HW accel alleviates most of the pain, but doesn't eliminate it.

My primary HTPC has a C2D/EE, which handles full-screen Hulu with HW accel beautifully.

 

[Van G]

No they aren't. Any PCI-E video card will work in your computer regardless of version. PCI-E is backwards and forwards compatible.

So I can plug one of the any of the PCI-E 2.0 x16 cards into this board?

I think I may just use this box as a starting point and then turn it into NAS if I want more from the HTPC side.

 

[toyota]

there is no such thing as an Athlon 64 X2 3200.

 

[Van G]

there is no such thing as an Athlon 64 X2 3200.

You're right. My bad: Athlon X2 2800 OC'd to 3200 -> it's been a while since I've used it.

 

[toyota]

You're right. My bad: Athlon X2 2800 OC'd to 3200 -> it's been a while since I've used it.

there's no such thing as that either, lol. X2 is dual core and the slowest A64 X2 was a 3600. you have a single core 2800 or 3200 A64.

 

[Van G]

Athlon & X2 I'm sure about.
Perhaps 3600 oc'd to 4200. I'll find out when I put it back together and turn it on.

 

[Binky]

I've run a 3450 in machines as slow as a Sempron 140 (2.7ghz, 1 core) as a media machine and I never had any problems. I don't recall any HD media being a problem under Vista or Win7.

They will only be marginally faster, but the next upgrades in the AMD line are the 4350 or the 5450.