[bluray]

anyway while the on-board intel grafics did work fine with anything i threw at it in MPC-HC
i had constant lock ups in XBMC, so i ended up just using the gt 440, solved all my problems. if it was not for the xbmc issues the intel grafics would
have been fine i think, i didnt have any high bitrate mkv's to to test, but standerd sized 1080p movies 10 to 18gb
would play fine, personaly i normally just download 720p versions around 5gb for my media center, any moive that i want
in high quailty i buy blurays anyway, and im over 800 movies in my bluray collection, my htpc is more for tv shows and
movies i dont care to own on bluray, if i could solve the xbmc problems, i would scrap the 440 in favor of noise reduction

Did you disable DXVA2 as show in my screen shots below? You can select "High Performance" power option in Windows 7 control panel too...

[lagledavid]

God job Turdpeterson this looks like a nice mid build i would love to see something like this in the $150 range

[GomezAddams]

I am considering the ECS H61H2-M2 MB and G530 combination for XBMC using Windows XP.

Have any of you using this MB had problems with the Atheros ethernet? I seem to recall having problems with Atheros NICs in the past.

[bwall244]

Are there any difference in capabilities(excluding games) of a G540 WITHOUT dedicated GPU and say the a6-3500 or the i3 3220? Would streaming from server to multiple boxes effect this?

[bluray]

Are there any difference in capabilities(excluding games) of a G540 WITHOUT dedicated GPU and say the a6-3500 or the i3 3220? Would streaming from server to multiple boxes effect this?

If you don't care about 3d, it should be very similar....