Login at Kodi Home

rpa80 · 2011-11-17, 20:56

I just checked some E350 alternatives

Asus E35M1-I Deluxe : 1254 SEK ($184)
Zotac FUSION350-A-E : 1313 SEK ($193)

But I guess I need at RAM to these prices as well. Don't think I can reuse the current RAM.

But do the E350 CPU actually outperform an Athlon 3000+?

eskro · 2011-11-17, 21:06

yes, i say almost double performance...

Mallet21 · 2011-11-17, 21:10

The XBMC gui is CPU intensive and my worry is that your 1.8 single core athlon is gonna make for a pretty poor user experience.....regardless of the graphics card.

At those prices though to upgrade the internals it might make sense to try the pci card....hopefully the retailer has a generous return policy if it doesn't work to your liking.

Balinus · 2011-11-17, 21:24

rpa80 Wrote:I just checked some E350 alternatives

Asus E35M1-I Deluxe : 1254 SEK ($184)
Zotac FUSION350-A-E : 1313 SEK ($193)

But I guess I need at RAM to these prices as well. Don't think I can reuse the current RAM.

But do the E350 CPU actually outperform an Athlon 3000+?

RAM will be fairly cheap. If you go towards Linux, you'd only need 2GB, so here in Canada is ~15$. Anyway, even for 4GB, it will be cheap at around 30-35$.

bluray · 2011-11-17, 21:48

rpa80 Wrote:I just checked some E350 alternatives

Asus E35M1-I Deluxe : 1254 SEK ($184)
Zotac FUSION350-A-E : 1313 SEK ($193)

But I guess I need at RAM to these prices as well. Don't think I can reuse the current RAM.

But do the E350 CPU actually outperform an Athlon 3000+?

wow, it's start to get complicated and expensive.

if you want to go with e350 route, i am suggesting a brand new htpc instead. this brand new and very well equipped e350 pc, might be cheaper and you know that it'll work:

HP Compaq XZ846UT Small Form Factor Desktop PC - AMD Dual Core E350 1.6GHz, 2GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, DVDRW, Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit

rpa80 · 2011-11-18, 09:50

After some further (re)search I found that the form factor of the motherboard is FlexATX... so, no upgrade is possible to any mATX board since the FlexATX is smaller...

So I guess I'll just go and by the cheapest (8400 GS) card. It will at least minimize the cost if it turns out to be useless user experience.

Thanks for the help guys!

bluray · 2011-11-18, 18:43

rpa80 Wrote:After some further (re)search I found that the form factor of the motherboard is FlexATX... so, no upgrade is possible to any mATX board since the FlexATX is smaller...

So I guess I'll just go and by the cheapest (8400 GS) card. It will at least minimize the cost if it turns out to be useless user experience.

Thanks for the help guys!

i agreed, and i think that installing a new low cost gpu is the safest and cheapest route to upgrade it.

rpa80 · 2011-12-12, 18:56

So, I ended up getting a geforce 8400 GS and installed XBMClive on an old 2.5 5400 SATA drive originating from an mac book.

I must say I'm very satisfied with the result. It does not take too long to boot. It plays HD contents without any stutter och hickups and I can stream video from the net. The cpu load is about 20% in the menu and 5-10% during playback.

The remote worked nearly out of the box. Had to fix the play/pause button and add the USB ID in the MCEUSB driver.