[Micro-ATX] Pentium 2x2.6Ghz + GT210

jackh Wrote:ps2: [color="red"]a hat-tip to the excellent work of the open-source community in general, and in particular to xbmc, to eskro for his hardware recommendations

ftw!!!!!!!!

I just built myself a HTPC from this spec to replace my old HTPC
a Fujitsu Q1510 with an intel i3 330M processor, since the intel onboard gpu just can't handle high bitrate h264 encoded videos...

Due to local avilability I changed the config slightly
CPU: Intel Celeron G540
Graphics ASUS Geforce 210 512MB Silent
Motherboard: ASUS P861-M PRO

Windows 7 Ultimate x64, and XBMC 11.0 Eden Beta 3

Started off with some heavy blu ray rips with high bitrate and everything was smooth and nice (with DXVA enabled, otherwise it stutter, which I kind of expected with this CPU). So I was quite happy.

Then I was going to watch some mpeg2 PAL region 2 dvd rips, and the video stutters and drops frames.. I just couldn't imagine that one coming... Turned off DXVA and it's smooth as silk. ok, maybe old drivers (I was using what windows update gives me here) so I went to nvidia and downloaded the and installed the latest drivers, version 285.62, with the result that it got even worse...

In XBMC I have the following settings
Render method: Auto detect (Tried with DXVA as well, with no difference)
DXVA: On
Adjust display refresh rate to match video: On
Sync playback to display: Off

So when running this DVD the resolution is set to 1920 × 1080, 50 Hz

Started to lookup on reviews of the Geforce 210, and it seems that it's having quality issues on playback, see this one for example: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphic...html#sect1

I was kind of surprised since this card seems to be recommended by a lot of people in the xbmc forums...

Do you have any nice trick to solve this, some special settings in the nvidia driver? or xbmc? or should I just go and buy a better graphics card....

Erikt:
I have almost your same motherboard (ASUS H61, different model), almost your same processor (Celeron G530), and almost your same graphics card (ASUS 1GB Silent).
The only big difference is that I use Linux, not Window$... and my machine runs flawlessly with anything I throw at it.

I'd suggest give XBMCLive a try and see what happens...

I'm going to fiddle around in windows a bit more to see if I can get it working properly first.

Otherwise I will probably give XBMCbuntu a try.

ok, now I downgraded the drivers to what Asus have on their webpage, version 267.85 which is definitively better than 285.62, but mpeg 2 still works better with dxva turned off...

delete plz

after watching some more movies and tv shows I encountered occasional frame drops and stuttering on h264 playback as well, I tried many different drivers etc, but just couldn't get it working satisfactory. So I have now replaced the card with a GT 520 instead, looking good so far!

weird, which gt210 u had? never had a single issue with mine

Just curious: If I want to use this build together with an SSD, wouldn't it be better to use a board that support SATA 6Gb/s?

depends on what u mean by better....
i got a SATA-II SSD and its all the fast'ness i need.