[quorton]

I have a htpc with a gigabyte GA-MA78GM-DS2H motherboard, which has AMD 780G chipset integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 3200-based graphics .

I installed win7 32b enterprise and XBMC (Camelot). Do I need anything else ?

for instance for hardware decoding etc, I've read xbmc installs all necessary codecs, but on the other hand I've read postings from people who use ffdshow for instance. If xbmc has everything, why install ffdshow ?

And I've read win7 has a special API for hardware decoding video that xbmc uses or is that just with the intel chipset ?

(PS. I did use the search, but couldn't find an answer)

[natethomas]

You need to install XBMC Dharma RC1, then go to Settings>Video>Playback>"Allow Hardware Acceleration (dxva2)." At this point, Camelot is old news and you'll get dramatically better playback and support while running Dharma. You should have no trouble installing Dharma directly over your Camelot install (no uninstalling required).

That should be all. DXVA2 supports ati, nvidia, and intel to greater or lesser extents.

Some people install ffdshow if they are running WinXP and a special version of XBMC, because WinXP does not support dxva2. Since that situation does not apply to you, I wouldn't worry about it.

[quorton]

thanx for the info (and sorry about posting in the wrong group)
I wasn't sure about Dharma because its still RC1, and I thought it would be better to go for the stable build. But I might as well try it out.

How long do you think before Dharma is considered a stable build ?

[natethomas]

Your guess is as good as mine. But considering we've got RC1 out, it wouldn't be unreasonable to hope for a pre-Christmas full release.

[Soutie]

I wasn't sure about Dharma because its still RC1, and I thought it would be better to go for the stable build. But I might as well try it out.

Honestly you will be better off with RC1, the camelot scrapers etc are pretty out of date from what I gather and you will run into more issues with the system than you will with Dharma (which is really stable ATM)

[alexrose1uk]

You might need to do a directx update, as well (google directx websetup) but otherwise, xbmc is self contained, so as long as your drivers etc are installed

[quorton]

new install win7 + latest drivers
just tried a 1080p mkv, went from 80% cpu to maybe 10%, wow....