[lololuvemma]

Hi,

I first tried to use XBMC about 2 years ago after I purchased a Lenovo Q180. I soon gave up as XBMC was using too much ressources, increasing the computer temperature and fan usage.

I assume if was due to this (found on XBMC Wikipedia page):

But because of its origins from the Xbox game-console, XBMC's legacy graphics renderer still runs in a game-loop environment rather than using event-driven and on-demand rendering, meaning that it is constantly re-drawing the GUI and refreshing the frames as fast as it can the even when nothing is changing on-screen. This results in very high CPU and high GPU usage, which can be observed on embedded systems and low-end machines, and hence cause high temperatures, high fan activity, and high power consumption unless capped at a maximum frame per second configuration for that specific platform build.

Could some one confirm if things have changed or if the same limitation persist?

I'd really like to be able to use XBMC but I don't want to invest a few hours to set it up to find out that my PC is still not powerful enough to run it.

Thanks in advance.

[un1versal]

Dirty regions (wiki) has been added and XBMC has improved a lot and is used on lowered powered devices like the Raspberry PI which has no cooling whatsoever, in any case, it strikes me that your immediate usage case and XBMC arent really "compatible". Stick to VLC or your player of choice.

I have read other threads about similar machines and they tend to have related over heating issues (because their design is so slim , if Im not mistaken its similar machine (in design) I think. In any case I doubt xbmc running on tat will change now as it is a compact machine and will suffer from same issues.

You could also install Openelect to a usb stick and test it without changing your machine at all, if that works then welcome to xbmc, if not hey... thats was a whole 10 minutes wasted creating the usb disk with openelec..

[m.savazzi]

It runs smoothly on my Q190, no fan issues, CPU Always less then 25% in full hd (1080p) mode!

[un1versal]

XBMC during plaback is not the same as XBMC on iddle one uses GPU the other is CPU intensive.

[Ned Scott]

XBMC while idle in the GUI on my 2009 Core2Duo MBP only does about 2% CPU usage. I actually keep XBMC on all the time and normally minimized or in the background to be a UPnP server, but even in the foreground, it uses very little CPU, especially compared to two years ago :)

[Kib]

Xbmc Gotham uses about 10%-15% cpu on my ION2 system while in menus.
This used to be 60%-70%, so yeah it has been improved quite a bit.

[Kib]

Did you see
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=176098

[lololuvemma]

Thank you all for the feedback and good job to all the XBMC developers. Seems like they're never resting on their laurels.

I will give it another try then.