[BLKMGK]

Maybe this is the reason why you have not found 2.66GHz sufficient for smooth playback of killa sample...

<sigh> I have been running XBMC on Linux hardware for probably close to a year, the hardware list in my sig is my main box. That is a 2.66ghz CPU that was unable to run Killa' smoothly until it was overclocked. That machine is running Hardy 8.04 and was upgraded from the previous 7.x build of Ubuntu before it. 3ghz is what it takes and if you have been paying attention you will have seen that on my SECOND box running Intrepid the CPU usage is EVEN and smooth. THAT box was tested with an overclocked Celeron first and then with a 45nm 2.66ghz C2D that yes required 3ghz give or take to stop dropping frames. I do not know how much clearer I can be on this but 2.66ghz ain't cutting it and so far as I know only one person running Linux found a DIFFERENT 2.66ghz CPU to be sufficient - that CPU having more cache than mine.

adix - the Intrepid build I have was done from scratch. Drive formatted, the works. I had originally tried it with Hardy and it ran video fine but I wanted HDMI audio and that required a later video driver that was most easily obtained from Intrepid's repository. So, I formatted it and started all over. I turned off desktop effects, I left PulseAudio alone, I loaded the later ALSA using a script on the Ubuntu forums, I loaded Thunar, I loaded the XBMC deps, I pulled and loaded XBMC. Oh, I have subcommander on there too for playing with the SVN. Everything else is pretty much standard - it has the SBMC splash screens too. In the BIOS I maxxed out vid memory, overclocked the CPU, and uncoupled the memory from the CPU. I loaded up the latest BIOS ASUS has for that board based on things I'd read on AVSforum. I also dorked with the ALSA setup some, never got stereo sound from HDMI but got 5.1 and that was most important. Somewhere in there I updated all of the patches for the OS. If someone can give me the commands I can pull the kernel revision and other stuff. To test I am simply running Killa' and hitting the play button again to get the stats, 10frames dropped up front the first time, 14 the second, CPU usage never goes over 80% and it's almost perfectly split. If someone has a burning need I can try to snap a pic of it, will screenshot work for capturing this?