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hi,
i'm thinking of building a new HTPC. I'm using an old P4 with XP-MCE right now.
To reduce Power-consumption and noise i want to buy a Atom 330 board with Nvidias ION-Chipset.
But I'm not sure if the Atom 330 (Dual-Core) will be strong enough to run XBMCE with Aeon in 1080p FullHD.
Has anybody of you already tried that, or is using the same Components?
I will buy a Asus or Zotac board an running XP as OS.
Thanks for your help!
dea
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Yup it'll run fine, Linux is fastest, but using Windows 7 and DXVA acceleration it runs nice too
dunno if DXVA works in XP though
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Alright you got me to register =p... Anyway the atom 330 nvidia ion has plenty of power I just built one about three weeks ago for my new htpc though I do suggest that you download the BETA adobe flash to take advantage of the ion otherwise you will not have hardware acceleration for sites that use flash ie youtube and hulu (on a side note hulu desktop is a little choppy at times ,but the website runs flawlessly me thinks hulu needs to work on their app a bit).
My build
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ZOTAC IONITX-A-U Atom 330 (overclocked to 2ghz no problems)
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit (max out the ram as the gpu uses a portion of it.)
Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive (you can go green to save one energy ,but I just don't care for them yet)
LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS424-98 LightScribe Support (yep no blue ray figure I can use the ps3 for that)
Logitech diNovo Mini Black Bluetooth Wireless Mini Keyboard (love this little thing it never drops the signal and the htpc is a little over 20 feet away the only downside is no f keys so you will need another keyboard to setup your os with or go with a dinovo edge)
APEX MI-008 Black Steel Mini-ITX Tower (was cheap and looks great don't get suckered into buying a $150.00+ htpc case... On a side note if you do get this case you will have to mount the hd on the side as the 3.5" bay in the front is way to close to the motherboard and the cables do not want to fit though you could always drill a few new mounting holes.)
OS - windows xp pro though I tried ubuntu it looks great ,but I am not use to linux yet so I reverted to xp.
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The 'green' hard drives also make less noise, speed difference is neglectible, especially when it makes less noise in my opinion.
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True the green do run a tad cooler and quieter ,but they are also not as fast as the blue or black models and the black also has a five year warranty compared to the three you get with the other two.
Honestly if you wanted a really quiet machine you would be using a ssd drive ,but the cost is just not worth it and xp is not ssd friendly by far it will ruin a ssd drive quickly.
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True...but for me a green drive is cheaper and more quiet, and people say the speed difference is neglectible when you use it as a drive just to play media with. I never have any problems streaming full hd content from the drive. So, in my opinion it's an even better choice then the blue or black models - cost and noise-wise.
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I have win7, 2gb ram, asrock330 ion system, latest dsplayer build. Aeon65, hitched etc..
Thumbsize sample 512, each movie folderart roughly 768kb. Fanart turned on and I can say in my experience that combination is a sluggish experience. Do try the live builds tho, performance might be better? (win7 is a real ram-hog).
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xbmc on xp runs great though as I mentioned above I did try a full ubuntu install(very easy to install) with xbmc it worked quiet well the downside was I know jack about linux and it's even harder to find decent emulators and apps as most are developed for windows =(.
Btw Aeon stark the plain old no mods aeon skin works quiet well with no lag ,but I have also tried Aeon65 and I have to admit it lags a bit and crashes often though I think this modded version just needs a little more work and it will be faster/more stable.
(on a side note I am playing with linux on a vm as I see it as the future for most of my new machines).
