2011-03-08, 14:32
Hello!
I've spent the last couple of weeks getting a bit of information overload reading all the (excellent) recommendations on hardware for XBMC. I've been using XBMC for a couple of years as I used to live overseas until recently and had no english language TV so a way of organising downloaded content was a godsend.
Still, I'm running off a very basic setup - an old asus eee 1000h netbook with Win XP, xbmc, sickbeard + Couch potato connected with an RGB cable to my shiny new 37" LCD TV. As my library has grown the interface has started to creak and I'm obviously unable to play any full HD videos. Media is served from 3 external USB drives.
Tho I'm not really a frequent gamer I recently got a new i5 laptop for work which came with a radeon mobility 5450 which has whet my appetite - new games look very nice indeed even on low-medium settings + resolutions, and my wife has expressed an interest in games we can play together on the sofa.
I recently saw that Wii games can be emulated on the PC (which looks like a good option for 2 player games) and wondered whether it makes more sense to build a beast of a microATX machine that will handle modern games, emulation of recent consoles, plus all the tasty media that XBMC offers, or to build a nice quiet miniITX atom+ion rig for media only and maybe at some point put games elsewhere.
I had been thinking I might build a seperate desktop computer for work with some power for some gaming but actually I'm quite happy with the performance of the laptop for work and would like to avoid cable spaghetti if I did want to play games on a big screen hence the idea of integrating the two, but there seems to be very little discussion of this sort of build vs a media specific box.
So I guess my options are:
1. Acer Revo or similar, plus my just laptop or maybe even a console or something
2. i3 / AMD x4 with a GTS 450 or so for casual gaming
3. i5 2500 K with a GTX 460 for something that will last a long long time
1 is obviously simplest + cheapest
2 is not bad but i wonder if I'd feel i'd skimped too much if I did want to do more gaming
3 is probably overkill for something that will sit under the telly most of the time but could be good for some cinematic gaming experiences. Heat + power consumption may also be an issue tho it looks like Sandy Bridge is much less energy hungry than the early core i processors?
Any thoughts on what you would do? One big beast of a box that does everything except make you tea, or seperate tools for seperate jobs?
any advice would be much appreciated - cheers
I've spent the last couple of weeks getting a bit of information overload reading all the (excellent) recommendations on hardware for XBMC. I've been using XBMC for a couple of years as I used to live overseas until recently and had no english language TV so a way of organising downloaded content was a godsend.
Still, I'm running off a very basic setup - an old asus eee 1000h netbook with Win XP, xbmc, sickbeard + Couch potato connected with an RGB cable to my shiny new 37" LCD TV. As my library has grown the interface has started to creak and I'm obviously unable to play any full HD videos. Media is served from 3 external USB drives.
Tho I'm not really a frequent gamer I recently got a new i5 laptop for work which came with a radeon mobility 5450 which has whet my appetite - new games look very nice indeed even on low-medium settings + resolutions, and my wife has expressed an interest in games we can play together on the sofa.
I recently saw that Wii games can be emulated on the PC (which looks like a good option for 2 player games) and wondered whether it makes more sense to build a beast of a microATX machine that will handle modern games, emulation of recent consoles, plus all the tasty media that XBMC offers, or to build a nice quiet miniITX atom+ion rig for media only and maybe at some point put games elsewhere.
I had been thinking I might build a seperate desktop computer for work with some power for some gaming but actually I'm quite happy with the performance of the laptop for work and would like to avoid cable spaghetti if I did want to play games on a big screen hence the idea of integrating the two, but there seems to be very little discussion of this sort of build vs a media specific box.
So I guess my options are:
1. Acer Revo or similar, plus my just laptop or maybe even a console or something
2. i3 / AMD x4 with a GTS 450 or so for casual gaming
3. i5 2500 K with a GTX 460 for something that will last a long long time
1 is obviously simplest + cheapest
2 is not bad but i wonder if I'd feel i'd skimped too much if I did want to do more gaming
3 is probably overkill for something that will sit under the telly most of the time but could be good for some cinematic gaming experiences. Heat + power consumption may also be an issue tho it looks like Sandy Bridge is much less energy hungry than the early core i processors?
Any thoughts on what you would do? One big beast of a box that does everything except make you tea, or seperate tools for seperate jobs?
any advice would be much appreciated - cheers