[phiqtion]

great forum! i've searched and searched but just needed some 1 on 1 advice with my hardware. i plan on building a htpc based off xbmc to play mkv's and some vc-1 blu rips.

my lcd is 720p but my vids are 1080p mkv's, does this mean i need to go by the 1080p recommended hardware or stick with 720p? i will have xbmc set up as 720p.

i already ordered:

c2d E7300 2.66GHz
2gb ddr2 800
640gb WD green

now the hard part is deciding that north bridge and onboard vid to play these types of formats. i was initially thinking of a shuttle barebones which has the intel 3100 as onboard vid.

any suggestions

[mr_raider]

The work your CPU has to do depends on the encoding of the content file. 1080p encode is 1080p encode. After that, scaling down to whatever your monitor supports doesn't require much oevrhead.

[phiqtion]

so any advice on hardware?

[olympia]

Asus p5n7a-vm

[BLKMGK]

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Public...er=9999386