[goldstar0011]

Howdy

Now xbmc is leaving the xbox I think it's time I move on for the main system and get a PC built.

Won't be going for anything major just yet, want to get started and play about so here's the system so far

P5N-E sli plus
Pentium D 3ghz
2GB RAM
As many HD's as possible

Question is what GFX card?
I have 2 spare 7800GT's but if I read right 8xxx series is needed for HD support?
I need to know what's the best card to get, bare in mind I want cheap as possible for now, am guessing I won't need 8800GTX as won't be gaming!

Haven't decided if PC with be Live or Windows with XBMC, all depends on the best support.

Give me your advise and I'd be much appreciative

Thanks

[hazeh]

I bought an nvidia gt220 off ebay for about 30 quid or something.
These new nvidia cards with vdpau can easily handle all my HD content with the cpu staying pretty much idle - I don't really know too much about the support on older video cards like your 7800GT.
A new budget card is fine for HD content, the more expensive 'gaming' cards bring no extra performance for media consumption, only extra cost/heat/sound etc.

I have very little experience with the windows xbmc build, but the livecd works great - it'll seem very similar to your old xbox.

[Hannes The Hun]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Pure...HD.29_GPUs

[goldstar0011]

Cheers guys!

Any other tips for a PC and XBMC? the xbox gave my the luxury of it being all set

[hazeh]

I'd start off by dedicated a single hard disk to xbmc, booting off the live cd, doing a full install and rebooting.
For me and the current live cd release, pretty much everything worked out of the box except my bluetooth remote and the lcd screen on my case. Not quite the xbox 'out of the box' experience, but almost and tonnes more rewarding once it's set up.
I'd use this initial install to fiddle around with help from these and the ubuntu forums, and get whatever you want working while documenting your changes - I'd start again from scratch and implement the changes into my production machine for piece of mind

There's tonnes of documentation and forum help available, but my initial 'tip' is that accessing the machine for both terminals and file transfers by default is through ssh/sftp, so use a client that supports sftp (like filezilla on windows) and set the port to 22 - apologies if that's blindingly obvious to you

[neil.j1983]

no-ones said it here yet, but avoid ATi.

nvidia just works better with xbmc, wether you go windows or linux, you'll have alot less headaches with nvidia.

[goldstar0011]

GeForce 210 on it's way (never liked ATI)

I aim to have this basic HTPC running smoother and quicker than my mate and his Acer Netop thingy, we working as an ISP tech support so isn't dumb but can't get his working in Win7 right let alone xbmc