[numb1zero]

Hi everyone. Long time lurker first time poster here

I'm pretty familiar with XBMC and am using it on multiple pc's around my home & have them linked together with mysql.

my question is about hardware. I feel that my main (living room) htpc is under-performing considering it's specs. Maybe I'm over estimating my cpu's abilities.
I notice it when scrolling through long lists of files. It seems to have a hard time populating the information as quickly as I'm scrolling making it difficult to find what you want in a list (especially music listed by artist)
The files are all stored locally (mostly on a 1tb external hard drive connected directly to that computer) but accessed through SMB for the sake of synchronized databases.

The system takes its sweet time responding to commands (such as "back" in the gui) as well.

Playback of 1080p video files is often choppy too. (Haven't tested bluray playback yet)

Anyway, here are my specs and I'll be watching this thread to answer any questions anyone has. Thanks so much in advance for any guidance. I'm a hardware novice for sure.

oh also, i experience a poping sound upon a video file starting and upon returning to xbmc menu from playing a video. Very annoying but I've learned to deal with it. Just thought i'd mention it in case its an easy fix.
I run HDMI out of the gpu to the rca hdtv and optical audio from the hdtv to the rca surround sound audio receiver (5.1)


Motherboard:
PASUS A8M2N-LA
Micro-ATX
GeForce 6150 LE chipset
2.0 GT/s front side bus speed
Marvell 88EC031 integrated LAN
One PCI Express x16
Three PCI

CPU
Athlon 64 X2 (W) 5000+ 2.6 GHz (AM2)

RAM
3GB DDR2 (1024mb x 1024mb x 512mb x 512mb)

Internal Hard Drive
Samsung SpinPoint V60
60 GB capacity
ATA-100
5400 rpm

External Hard Drive
Western Digital My Book 1TB
800MHz CPU Processor
1 TB capacity
usb 2.0

Video
PNY NVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti (2gb)

Power Supply
COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power 600W ATX

Optical Drive
Samsung 12x BD

OS
XP SP3 32-bit, build 2600

[smiley2billion]

Not sure why the performance isn't better but I can comment about the audio.

Every time I've tried to run HDMI in to my TV and then back out of the optical audio from the TV to a receiver has always resulted in strange issues. On my setup the optical from the TV can only deliver 2.0 stereo (unless the source is an ATSC antenna and the feed happens to have 5.1 in it). This may be only a Samsung thing, I've never really researched it further. It would also cause weird delays on how long the audio would take to start after I started a video, never any sync issues, just took forever to start playing.

Your system looks plenty capable so I'd try a reformat or get a usb drive and boot to OpenELEC to test.

[PatrickVogeli]

I would think that XP is the problem.. switch to Linux or Windows 7 and it should be better.

[numb1zero]

Not sure why the performance isn't better but I can comment about the audio.

Every time I've tried to run HDMI in to my TV and then back out of the optical audio from the TV to a receiver has always resulted in strange issues. On my setup the optical from the TV can only deliver 2.0 stereo (unless the source is an ATSC antenna and the feed happens to have 5.1 in it). This may be only a Samsung thing, I've never really researched it further. It would also cause weird delays on how long the audio would take to start after I started a video, never any sync issues, just took forever to start playing.

Your system looks plenty capable so I'd try a reformat or get a usb drive and boot to OpenELEC to test.

Glad I'm not the only one, thanks for sharing. Optical is just weird that's my professional opinion lol.
I'll eventually upgrade my receiver to something with hdmi pass through but until then I'll deal with the pops.
How big of a drive would I need to boot open elec and does xbmc run on that for testing purposes?

EDIT: did a little reading on openelec, my does xbmc run on it question makes no sense, haha, i see.
I wonder if i even need windows with this as an option, the reason i'm staying away from linux though (and i wonder if it would rule this out as a long term solution as well) is that I use mysql to sync my databases.
I could install the mysql server on another machine (say my primary gaming machine that also has xbmc on it for the hell of it) but could i access the advanced_settings.xml file on the machine running openelec? (needed for mysql sync)

I would think that XP is the problem.. switch to Linux or Windows 7 and it should be better.

do you think that I'll be able to run 7 smoothly? I installed xp rather than 7 because of the system's minimal cpu. Figured it'd be lighter than 7.
While not looking forward to setting everything up again after a format and 7 install, if you think it'll help at least that's something I can do without buying any new hardware.

[PatrickVogeli]

Well, in XP you don't have HW acceleration, that's why you get choppy 1080 playback. With your GPU playback ill be absolutely smooth in 7 or linux.

Your internal Hard drive is also a big problem.. that Hard drive is quite old and I would guess it's SLOW! Get an SSD or at least a 7200rpm HDD and it will also be much better.

Your system with XBMCbuntu or Openelec and a fast HDD should Fly!

[numb1zero]

Well, in XP you don't have HW acceleration, that's why you get choppy 1080 playback. With your GPU playback ill be absolutely smooth in 7 or linux.

Your internal Hard drive is also a big problem.. that Hard drive is quite old and I would guess it's SLOW! Get an SSD or at least a 7200rpm HDD and it will also be much better.

Your system with XBMCbuntu or Openelec and a fast HDD should Fly!

Yeah the system is built using all spare parts I had lying around so some of the components (HDD!!!) are less than ideal; but, I can pick up a small ssd for pretty cheap these days.
Do you think that the external drive -> USB 2.0 -> pc is a bottleneck for data transfer or should 2.0 be fine?
The solution for that is of course picking up a 7200rpm 1tb internal hdd (sata) but that's not exactly cheap... do you guys think that's a necessary or at least beneficial move?

also, if I go to openelec (which i'm now seriously considering and reading about) can anyone recommend which build I use?
I would think one of the generic builds because I don't see anything more specific to what I've got. (AMD processor/Nvidia video.)

[bluray]

Windows 7 with DXVA2 enable will work "As Is".....

[PatrickVogeli]

I've used USB 2.0 hard drives and it has always been fine, and they were 5400 ones (green drives). As Bluray says, changing to Windows 7 and enabling DXVA2 will solve the choppy playback, but not with the overall slowness of the system (pressing back in the gui, populating lists), that's where an SSD or a faster HDD will help.

If you are only using this computer for HTPC duties and you have no spare license of Windows 7, I believe that buying a copy is a waste of money. I would advise to first try XBMCbuntu or Openelec. If it doesn't work you can always get a copy of windows and switch to that.

[DJ_Izumi]

It's totally the fact that you are using Windows XP. In Windows XP, hardware acceleration is not available. Without hardware accelerated DXVA the CPU has to be used and only in a recent Gotham Alpha has multi-threading for h.264 decoding been enabled, so even Frodo 12.1 can only use a single thread, a single 2.6ghz core, to decode that 1080p video. That's not enough to do 1080p in most situations.

You should install Windows 7 and/or install a recent nightly that has multithreading of h.264 enabled.

[bluray]

I've used USB 2.0 hard drives and it has always been fine, and they were 5400 ones (green drives). As Bluray says, changing to Windows 7 and enabling DXVA2 will solve the choppy playback, but not with the overall slowness of the system (pressing back in the gui, populating lists), that's where an SSD or a faster HDD will help.

For playback, there is no different between the standard 5400 hdd and ssd.....

If you are only using this computer for HTPC duties and you have no spare license of Windows 7, I believe that buying a copy is a waste of money. I would advise to first try XBMCbuntu or Openelec. If it doesn't work you can always get a copy of windows and switch to that.

It's very cheap from here- Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Full. I have two W7 discs from SnaggStuff, and it works great....

[PatrickVogeli]

I've used USB 2.0 hard drives and it has always been fine, and they were 5400 ones (green drives). As Bluray says, changing to Windows 7 and enabling DXVA2 will solve the choppy playback, but not with the overall slowness of the system (pressing back in the gui, populating lists), that's where an SSD or a faster HDD will help.

For playback, there is no different between the standard 5400 hdd and ssd.....

If you are only using this computer for HTPC duties and you have no spare license of Windows 7, I believe that buying a copy is a waste of money. I would advise to first try XBMCbuntu or Openelec. If it doesn't work you can always get a copy of windows and switch to that.

It's very cheap from here- Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Full. I have two W7 discs from SnaggStuff, and it works great....

For playback sure, I said the same. But he's not only having problems on playback, read that?

As for Windows.. you are a window lover, ok. But paying $66 for a copy and only use that for XBMC... even if it was half of that it would be a waste for me. I guess the OP should clarify what he uses on his HTPC, after that we can discuss if Windows is worth it or not

[numb1zero]

My HTPC is used for XBMC most of the time and occasionally iTunes but it doesn't matter either way, I've got an installation code for w7 ultimate with nothing better to do with it.

I'm having to burn a modified installation disk because of motherboard compatibility (code 5) but I will have win7 installed by tomorrow. I will then install xbmx and run it without using OpenELEC first to see if my problems are solved. If I'm still having trouble, I'm going to try OpenELEC.

Like I said earlier, I'm not just a windows fan, i reply on mysql running in the background to maintain my synchronized databases.

Thanks for all the help so far everyone, I will report back as soon as I get 7 + XBMC running together.

[PatrickVogeli]

just FYI, I don't think that running MYSQL to share the dbs with other machines is possible with openelec, but it should be using xbmcbuntu

Once 7 is installed, tell us how it goea! good luck

[bluray]

For playback sure, I said the same. But he's not only having problems on playback, read that?

I uses all 5400, 7200 and ssd. SSD is somewhat over rated for HTPC. Sure, it boot up a little faster and little quicker gui but there is nothing to make me jump out of my seat.....

I read what OP described in the 1st page. The GUI issue he encountered might not be related to 5400 hard drive. It might be related to some other configurations in XP and Frodo.

To OP, after you installed W7, you can try some of the tips below-

1. Upgrade the latest Nvidia driver from here- Option 2: Automatically find drivers for my NVIDIA products
2. Disable "Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen" in XBMC settings/system/video output
3. Enable "Allow hardware acceleration (DXVA2)" and select "Auto detect" as Render method in XBMC system/settings/video/playback
4. For audio configurations, you can find some tips in this thread- Simplify XBMC configurations......

Let us know how it turn out after your install W7.....

[numb1zero]

just FYI, I don't think that running MYSQL to share the dbs with other machines is possible with openelec, but it should be using xbmcbuntu

Once 7 is installed, tell us how it goea! good luck

I was worried about that (openelec) but thats very interesting that xbmcubuntu would run it

For playback sure, I said the same. But he's not only having problems on playback, read that?

I uses all 5400, 7200 and ssd. SSD is somewhat over rated for HTPC. Sure, it boot up a little faster and little quicker gui but there is nothing to make me jump out of my seat.....

I read what OP described in the 1st page. The GUI issue he encountered might not be related to 5400 hard drive. It might be related to some other configurations in XP and Frodo.

To OP, after you installed W7, you can try some of the tips below-

1. Upgrade the latest Nvidia driver from here- Option 2: Automatically find drivers for my NVIDIA products
2. Disable "Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen" in XBMC settings/system/video output
3. Enable "Allow hardware acceleration (DXVA2)" and select "Auto detect" as Render method in XBMC system/settings/video/playback
4. For audio configurations, you can find some tips in this thread- Simplify XBMC configurations......

Let us know how it turn out after your install W7.....

Thanks for the tips, I will follow them all once everything is up and running. As of right now, I have xbmc installed on win7 and am in the process of setting up mysql. Will post back once I get running. Thanks again for everyone's help!!