[iced earth]

Hi All

I have a Upgrade HP XW4300 which is a few years old CAD workstation. it has :

ntel Pentium 4 Processor 640iii / 3.20 GHz, 2 MB, 800 MHz FSB, EM64Ti
8 gb ram
GC : NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400 (PCIe)

as it has only Displayport as video output I need to consider if it could be turned to a HTPC, mainly installing XBMC...but also be able to support all my large makv files which has 5.1 audio...

I am not sure if I could change its graphic cards to a more suitable to Multimedia?

It would be great if I could have your idea

Thanks
Mohsen

[Dougie Fresh]

First thing you could do is try a Displayport-to-HDMI adapter (or whatever input your TV has).

Otherwise, swapping out the graphics card for one with HDMI -- AMD HD6450 or Nvidia GT610 would work for viewing 1080p videos, no problem.

Without knowing what kind of connections you need (HDMI? SPDIF?) it's hard to say.

[iced earth]

thanks "Dougie Fresh" for your reply

as I need to have 5.1 channel Audio support, I am not sure what is the cheapest way to do this. I will connect HDMI to my JVC home theater. it also has optical input .

I have also SAMSUNG 60" plasma 8+ series ...

I had a HP Envy 15 laptop which I was using for my Multimedia player and manager bu using XBMC and then through my rotor and Ethernet cables I have my PC downloaded (the HP XW4300 that now I want to use it as Multimedia player/manager) , everything was working perfectly and I could get 1080p + 5.1 for all my high quality large MKV files, but last week that HP laptop stopped working ...

I am not sure if I could replace the current Graphic Cards with any gaming (multimedia) one (such as AMD HD6450 or Nvidia GT610 ) for this HP XW4300?

[Dougie Fresh]

According to this link on the HP website, it has a PCIe x16 slot (probably occupied by the card in there now) and put a different GPU card in there.

I don't know enough about DisplayPort to know if sound will work over a DP-to-HDMI adapter and/or if your current GPU card even has sound capabilities. I would think not.