[desertoak]

Hi,

Im about to buy and setup a new htpc and i was wondering if anyone got this setup fully working with xbmc for Linux:

-CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 http://processorfinder.intel.com/details...Spec=SLAWR
-Mainboard: Asus P5Q-EM http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l...odelmenu=1
-Eclosure: Antec Fusion Black 430 http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15739
-Main Memory: Corsair DDR2 PC6400/800MHz CL5 4GB http://www.corsair.com/_datasheets/TWIN2...6400C5.pdf
-HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD753LJ 32MB 750GB http://www.samsung.com/global/business/h...&ppmi=1155
-Blu-ray/HD DVD drive: LG GGC-H20L 16X http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/ggc-h20l.jhtml
-Keyboard: Ione Scorpius p20 http://www.ione.com.tw/2005/products/med...sc-p20.htm

This includes:

-HDMI output 720p/1080p on x264 content
-DD and DTS output over optical spdif
-Be able to play a Blueray movie from the Blu-ray/HD DVD drive in xbmc
-Access to Antec Fusion builtin IR-receiver
-Access to Antec fuision VFD
-Access to wireless keyboard

Is this all doable in xbmc for linux? Thanks in advance.

[althekiller]

The processor is both overkill and underpowered. You want a clock rate of at least 3GHz to GUARANTEE 1080p h264 playback. FFMPEG's decoding doesn't currently scale past 2 threads (best case) so the quadcore is a complete waste of money and power. The E8400 C2D is your best bet in that department. The rest of that stuff should be fine so long as there is linux support for it. 4GB of RAM is probably overkill as well. There is no hddvd/blu-ray playback in linux for the time being, PERIOD. So don't expect it in XBMC anytime soon and yes, that makes the optical drive a waste too.

[ltmon]

Be aware the G45 chipset, being very new, needs a bleeding edge distribution to support it.

I've looked at the packages for the current Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha and it _should_ now have the right kernel, drivers, ALSA version and Mesa version etc. without compiling anything yourself to work with a G45 motherboard. No guarantees though.

[malloc]

I'd spring for NVIDIA graphics, even if they're on board. Intel just doesn't have the greatest drivers.

[michal]

I've read the opposite. Intel has the best drivers it's just that until now their hardware has been the weakest.
This changes with the G45 though. The drivers just have to become included in current distributions.

Ubuntu 8.10 should do it.

[zAo_OSX]

I used XBMC with 8.10 Alpha 3 with the Intel DG45ID and it worked. Only Sound was a problem (should be fixed now).

[althekiller]

Don't trust malloc, he's just trying to get his employer more market share

[HenrikDK]

malloc: "I'd spring for NVIDIA graphics, even if they're on board. Intel just doesn't have the greatest drivers."

I wouldn't claim that, not even by a long shot. Nvidia has lately been very slow to adapt to consumer complaints in the linux marketspace:
http://digg.com/linux_unix/NVIDIA_Screws...inux_Users
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11044
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...4_12&num=1

Nvidia linux drivers constantly lag behind their windows counterparts:
"This is NVIDIA's biggest Linux driver update this summer, but it's sad to see they aren't providing any OpenGL 3.0 support yet on Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris when they have already done so for Windows. The improved stability is great along with the Render extension improvements, but in our initial tests of this new driver we have found that the render-bench test profile within the Phoronix Test Suite actually runs slower with this new driver."
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...7767&num=1

Intel on the other hand has had full same-day linux support for their recent chipsets (G35-G45) and while nvidia has removed XvMC support for newer cards in their recent drivers, intel continues to maintain this across their lineup of chipsets.

And if your building a linux system in the hopes of one day playing BluRay with hardware acceleration offloading to the GPU you're "shit out of luck" with a nvidia system:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showt...show=&st=&

Intel on the other hand is currently taking a very active part in the development of DRI2 and have recognised the need for GPU hardware acceleration of video playback through different initiatives:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ne...&px=NjYzNw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=...4&from=rss

I personally regard Nvidia's linux support as pathetic, even compared to ATI which historically had really shitty drivers, but has been making great inroads in improving their linux support since the merger with AMD. Although far from complete, they have at least acknowledged the need for video hardware acceleration on linux and are working towards achieving that goal.

It'll be a cold day in hell before i recommend nvidia cards to any linux users.

[desertoak]

The processor is both overkill and underpowered. You want a clock rate of at least 3GHz to GUARANTEE 1080p h264 playback. FFMPEG's decoding doesn't currently scale past 2 threads (best case) so the quadcore is a complete waste of money and power. The E8400 C2D is your best bet in that department. The rest of that stuff should be fine so long as there is linux support for it. 4GB of RAM is probably overkill as well. There is no hddvd/blu-ray playback in linux for the time being, PERIOD. So don't expect it in XBMC anytime soon and yes, that makes the optical drive a waste too.

I don't want the setup to be an dedicated htpc. I also want to have many ongoing bittorrent download progresses and simontaneously watch 1080p content. Therefore the choice of a quad-core cpu. Or is it overkill in that context?
Isnt Intels quad core @ 2,66GHz just as good as for example a p4 @ 3GHz if you compare the quad running @ one core?

Is it likley that FFMPEG will scale decoding across more threads in the near future?

I can live without a blueray/hd-dvd drive.

Thanks for your's and all other replies

[althekiller]

I don't want the setup to be an dedicated htpc. I also want to have many ongoing bittorrent download progresses and simontaneously watch 1080p content. Therefore the choice of a quad-core cpu. Or is it overkill in that context?
Isnt Intels quad core @ 2,66GHz just as good as for example a p4 @ 3GHz if you compare the quad running @ one core?

You can't compare a single core to multi-core processor without knowing the applications in use. The scalability is huge factor here, and though XBMC itself spawns many threads, few of them outside of decoding and rendering are compute heavy. There's no way you'd need a quad-core for torrenting concurrent with 1080p playback. Your issue there is going to be disk/network access long long long before CPU/memory usage (unless you want to seed like 300 movies at once, which I've done on a 800MHz P3 w/ 256MB of RAM ).

Is it likley that FFMPEG will scale decoding across more threads in the near future?

You'd have to ask them. I know they have a(some) GSoC student(s) working on something in that regard (though it may have been GPU offloading I can't recall).

[desertoak]

I used XBMC with 8.10 Alpha 3 with the Intel DG45ID and it worked. Only Sound was a problem (should be fixed now).

Nice! I was thinking about a DG45ID myself or maybe a
Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2Hhttp://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Mother...EG45M-DS2H who has its audio codec ALC889A supported by ALSA.

[desertoak]

You can't compare a single core to multi-core processor without knowing the applications in use. The scalability is huge factor here, and though XBMC itself spawns many threads, few of them outside of decoding and rendering are compute heavy. There's no way you'd need a quad-core for torrenting concurrent with 1080p playback. Your issue there is going to be disk/network access long long long before CPU/memory usage (unless you want to seed like 300 movies at once, which I've done on a 800MHz P3 w/ 256MB of RAM ).



You'd have to ask them. I know they have a(some) GSoC student(s) working on something in that regard (though it may have been GPU offloading I can't recall).

You're right. Do you have any HDD suggestions? Maybe Sata raided disks or SSD?
I have a 100MBps internet connection and sometimes torrenting can become very diskintensive.

[malloc]

I wouldn't claim that, not even by a long shot. Nvidia has lately been very slow to adapt to consumer complaints in the linux marketspace:
http://digg.com/linux_unix/NVIDIA_Screws...inux_Users
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11044
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...4_12&num=1

I don't see here any comparison with ATI or Intel speeds.

Nvidia linux drivers constantly lag behind their windows counterparts:
"This is NVIDIA's biggest Linux driver update this summer, but it's sad to see they aren't providing any OpenGL 3.0 support yet on Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris when they have already done so for Windows. The improved stability is great along with the Render extension improvements, but in our initial tests of this new driver we have found that the render-bench test profile within the Phoronix Test Suite actually runs slower with this new driver."
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...7767&num=1

I checked out Intel's website and they support OpenGL 2.0, so I don't see why you would complain that OpenGL 3.0 works on Windows only. As far as the slower drivers go, you could just not upgrade. Or you could once again show me a comparison against Intel or ATI. Or we could go back to the days where people complain that the driver is detecting benchmark programs and cheating them.

Intel on the other hand has had full same-day linux support for their recent chipsets (G35-G45) and while nvidia has removed XvMC support for newer cards in their recent drivers, intel continues to maintain this across their lineup of chipsets.

What? So they removed XvMC in all of the line up instead of just some of it? That's a good thing?

And if your building a linux system in the hopes of one day playing BluRay with hardware acceleration offloading to the GPU you're "shit out of luck" with a nvidia system:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showt...show=&st=&

Maybe I have to read the 100 page long thread to understand what's going on here, but I saw nothing in the first page. So Intel is behind some standard that may or may not be well adopted. We've got a GSOC student working on hardware acceleration. I bet he's not using Intel.

Intel on the other hand is currently taking a very active part in the development of DRI2 and have recognised the need for GPU hardware acceleration of video playback through different initiatives:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ne...&px=NjYzNw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=...4&from=rss

See above.

I personally regard Nvidia's linux support as pathetic, even compared to ATI which historically had really shitty drivers, but has been making great inroads in improving their linux support since the merger with AMD. Although far from complete, they have at least acknowledged the need for video hardware acceleration on linux and are working towards achieving that goal.

It'll be a cold day in hell before i recommend nvidia cards to any linux users.

Okay, I should recommend ATI then.

I've seen previous Intel chip sets wreck havoc on XBMC when you enable the wrong OpenGL setting. I'm sorry, but if you don't support something in OpenGL, you shouldn't make the system go to 1fps on enabling it. You should just silently ignore it. Perhaps if Intel developed its own drivers this wouldn't happen.

I'm not sure if you'd still be able to get an Intel CPU if you went with ATI. I'm not sure if you even care. I know we've also had to put in some fixes when ATI cards were epic failing. Hopefully that's all out of the way.

Sure, we've had issues with NVIDIA cards also, but as far as I know, we've never had to fix them.

Moral of the story is go with ATI I guess.

[malloc]

You're right. Do you have any HDD suggestions? Maybe Sata raided disks or SSD?
I have a 100MBps internet connection and sometimes torrenting can become very diskintensive.

Assuming you ever actually saturate that connection, a single SATA HD still has something like 3 Gbps transfer capability, so network is still your bottle neck. Maybe you manage to saturate the connection with 100 simultaneous downloads. Then your thrashing problems are due to seeking issues trying to get to all of the different files. Then you might want to go with SSD. But the size is not as good. And when you're pulling down 100Mbps all day you're going to go through a terrabyte of storage in only a day. Now, how you choose to watch those 34 HD movies you just downloaded yesterday is up to you. I'd recommend getting a few video cards so you can watch at least 4 movies at once. That way only 16 hours of your day will be spent watching movies.

Or...just get a SATA HD and be done with it. Stop overpowering your computer.

[zAo_OSX]

Nice! I was thinking about a DG45ID myself or maybe a
Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2Hhttp://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Mother...EG45M-DS2H who has its audio codec ALC889A supported by ALSA.

DG45IDs audio codec is supported by ALSA =< 1.0.16.