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I wanted to build a PC for XBMC and wanted to ask if Intel CELERON Dual Core would be enough. I mean not "okay", but capable of doing 1080P H264 MKV decoding. The CELERON saves some money I can put toward a better graphics card.
Thanks much.
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every message i've seen indicates that to achieve 1080P h.264-mkv playback w/o dropped frames, you need to be looking at 3GHz, e.g. c2d e8400. if you're comfortable overclocking than you can get by with a lesser CPU oc'd to 3.0 GHz. every recommendation i've seen is based upon the benchmark file, known as the "killa sample". you can search for that here on these forums and find hundreds of posts discussing this issue.
right now all video acceleration is done on the CPU and so you're better off getting a decent video card and a better CPU. i have an nVidia 8400GS w/ 256MB RAM onboard (<$30) and an e8400 and only drop 3-5 frames on startup and none at all afterwards.
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AFAIK, the 4500 isn't supported by Atlantis. it requires a newer kernel and X and a bunch of other stuff.
looking down the road, the 4500 should be golden because intel has released their video driver to the open source community. right now, you'd have to jump through a lot of hoops just to get the driver installed, and it still might not work with XBMC.
i really wanted to go with an intel mobo w/ the 4500HD chipset and a slower CPU, but reading here discouraged me from that plan. allegedly Atlantis +1 is going to support that combo, but who knows.
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I'm going to hurry up slowly and simply build a machine with Dual Core, at least 2.6Ghz CPU, 2GB RAM and at least NVidia 8400GS, and a good wireless network card.
I plan to do XBMC live with USB, so no need for DVD drive or HD at this time. If wireless doesn't work to well for HD, then so be it.
Thanks folks.
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Choose your USB wireless carefully. Linux driver support is spotty at best. I had to use ndiswrapper for my Realtek USB n stick.
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I meant BOOT from USB not for networking. I'll have a PCI Network Card in there.
But first, I need to hack my used xbox :-)