[gundam83]

I have an H55 based i3 setup and I'm currently using the onboard video. I know that XBMC will not be able to use the hardware acceleration, so my CPU has to take the complete load. The problem I have is with the Aeon MQ2 skin, which as most of you guys know, is probably the most performance taxing skin on XBMC. It's smooth for the most part, but with wall-mode, it is too sluggish for my liking. I'm even running XBMC off of an SSD. My actual video files are on my Unraid server, but fanart and thumbs are off of the SSD. Will a videocard help out? Or does a vid card only help video playback and not with the actual GUI? I am on Windows 7.

[natethomas]

I presume someone else knows better and can more effectively answer, but I doubt a better GPU is going to help much. Most of the slowdown is the result of the skin sucking up RAM and CPU cycles.

Edit: BTW, XBMC uses DirectX for rendering in Windows, but, to my knowledge, the problems you are experiencing are not DirectX related.

[poofyhairguy]

Yep, the heaver interfaces use more GPU power. I personally find that even ION systems (which are twice as powerful as the best Intel has) aren't enough for plain Aeon.