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bwhizz · 2011-04-13, 06:22

Hi guys and gals,

I have been reading the forums for the past days and now just need some final advice.

I have been looking into possible solutions that would suit my needs for a home theater. Considering several choices from ATV2, PS3, simple media players to HTPC's. Turns out that I am an HTPC kinda guy.

I narrowed it down to the currently available Asrock Ion 3D 152d, which imported from the US to NZ would be one of the best solutions in terms of price and performance. I did consider building it myself, but getting the right parts here for under the same price as the full unit is next to impossible.

So I pretty much settled on the 152d ... until today. I found the Zotac, which packs more punch thanks to its Celeron processors. And it's quite a bit cheaper as well. Yet it comes without remote and it seems to be without HDD as well. Also, it's hard to find as much information on it as on the Asrock.

The Asrock Atom/Ion combination seems to work pretty well in terms of running XMBC as well as all kinds of emulators and I have even seen some acceptable results with 3D games on Youtube (note that this was on a 330, so I expect the Ion3D to still top that). I am not a hardcore gamer but I would enjoy the odd game session with the wife.

Hope you guys can help a prospective new XMBC user out.

Laugh

MidnightWatcher · 2011-04-13, 06:27

The ND22 is much better than any of the Atom solutions, imho.

SynC_187 · 2011-04-13, 16:34

I've got the ION 3D and I'm very happy with it. Have tried it with Ubuntu, Live and Windows 7 and had no real problems. Performance is great, with very fast boot and smooth playback of full HD rips via wired network. Haven't tried the wireless, and the remote isn't a patch on my MS MCE one, but happy with everything else.

Stuck with Windows 7 in the end because I have the Blu-ray version and prefer PowerDVD to the MakeMKV workaround.

tboooe · 2011-04-13, 16:40

MidnightWatcher Wrote:The ND22 is much better than any of the Atom solutions, imho.

+1..I have an Atom system and the ND22. The Atom will work fine to play movies, music, etc but I found it to be slow when browsing with certain skins. The ND22 is indeed more powerful and thus a bit more responsive. In the future, I am going to build my own htpc with an even more powerful processor like the intel core i3 or i5. These are no doubt overkill but I like to use "heavy" skins and want to avoid any lag.

toineb · 2011-04-13, 16:42

Never used the asrock..... but I can highly recommend the zbox

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=97963

twotone8 · 2011-04-13, 16:49

you might also want to checkout the htpc hardware section of these forums. those are some knowledgeable folks when it comes to hardware.

nobody_here · 2011-04-13, 18:46

tboooe Wrote:+1..I have an Atom system and the ND22. The Atom will work fine to play movies, music, etc but I found it to be slow when browsing with certain skins. The ND22 is indeed more powerful and thus a bit more responsive. In the future, I am going to build my own htpc with an even more powerful processor like the intel core i3 or i5. These are no doubt overkill but I like to use "heavy" skins and want to avoid any lag.

I don't think you can get rid of it all, not the way XBMC is made at the core from what I understand. I have it running on a jacked and pumped up quad core system with gigs of ram and a mid-high end video card and the Aeon MQ2 skin still hitches when navigating once in a while. Confluence does not for instance. XBMC is fairly resource heavy but again, thats because of it's origins.

bwhizz · 2011-04-14, 09:43

Thanks everyone!

I have educated myself some more in the meantime and found AMD's solution with the E-350 APU. And it seems to be quite promising. More power for less money. But I might have to build it myself then. Anyway, food for thought ... I think I should ask around in the hardware forum now Rolleyes

MidnightWatcher · 2011-04-15, 03:12

bwhizz Wrote:Thanks everyone!

I have educated myself some more in the meantime and found AMD's solution with the E-350 APU. And it seems to be quite promising. More power for less money. But I might have to build it myself then. Anyway, food for thought ... I think I should ask around in the hardware forum now

You'll be stuck with Windows only for the time being if you go with a non-nVidia GPU. If you plan on using Linux (which is great, and free) then I'd recommend a good nVidia-based GPU.