[advid]

...just put together an old Fujitsu Esprimo - XP Pro (dual core 1.8) 1 MEG ram - and ATI 1meg graphics... HDMI to my 1080p TV....

Good overall picture - works a treat with attached USB 2TB HDD and ISO/MKV ripped dvd's. BUT - picture not smooth / little freezes -very 'twitchy' - sound out of sync ect.. when set to full 1080p....

Have to reduce (withing XBMC) down to around 848 x ? to get smooth motion.... but picture quality seems to suffer...not as much detail ect....

Is this set up not good enough for an XBMC HTPC ?

What can I do to improve - apart from buying another PC ??

[live4ever]

What GPU specifically? Try pressing 'o' during video playback to bring up codecinfo and look at the CPU usage. If you only have DVD rips (no HD) then you should be able to play them.

Also turn on debug logging and playback one of the problem videos.

[>>X<<]

It won't be good enough for HD not if your using XP as it doesn't support DXVA2 so no hardware decoding from your GPU assuming your GPU supports this in the first place

Its possible you might get away with 720p just using CPU but couldn't say for sure

[nikc0069]

1meg ram?! and 1meg graphics?

Hehe assuming you mean 1gb, This should be able to push 720 without hardware accelaration, but 1080P will be all but unwatchable.

If XBMC's internal codecs have problems, you could always try an external player and user CoreAVC or FFDshow codecs which are pretty fast using CPU alone (the "Final Codecs" pack is pretty good I've found for doing x264 decoding on CPU).