Hardware for Linux and XBMC

boba23 Wrote:I really don't know what you guys are doing, but I tend to find reports like these more realistic, than not being able to playback 720p at least with a 4800+:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=151682&postcount=6

Check out that whole thread, there are a couple of people reporting even very good 1080p playback.

I'd suggest, you make sure, that you are not having any other Linux/XBMC issues, which seriously hit your performance with video playback.

boba

As far as we can tell and we have 2 linux experts at our company nothing is causing the the slow down, of course a windows box will play this fine, how ever with linux the decoder is still having issues or not as optimized. What people probably arnt looking at is the info box during play back, hit 'i' on the keyboard and watch the dropped frames as they playback video. Also the source materials they may be watching could be some hdtv rip but not realize its 480p, im pretty sure for any decent play back yet the amd 939 line of cpu's just wont cut it, untill their are some good break thought in the decoder its self.

Jezz_X Wrote:The graphics card does heaps because its all rendered in opengl thats why I said nvidia is best because it supports opengl 2.0 and has shader model support
and it was a 1080p quicktime trailer

I could be wrong but isnt opengl used for the interface, and not playback of videos its self.

When the nvidia cards start shipping with h264 decoder chips it might be a different story in the future, where you can use the decoder on the chip instead of software (which requires alot of cpu), Currently nvidia cards only decode mpeg2, but then their still needs to be support in the driver layer for linux and the decoder software.

I just spec'd this up, preloaded with Ubuntu so half the work is done and I'm not wasting money on Windows.. but It's key for me to achieve H264 720p and ideally 1080p, otherwise, I'll just keep running my Xbox!

PROCESSOR N-Series-Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)
MEMORY 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
HARD DRIVE 160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache
GRAPHICS CARD 128MB nVidia® GeForce® 8300GS Turbocache graphics card

Does anyone know if this graphics card comes with DVI output - (just want my TV likes... and compatible with HDMI)

Cheers,

Oh.. and if anyone can confirm if this spec is up to the job too, that'd be much appreciated.

A Really Cheap attack on a good HTPC setup would be to use the nvidia 7025 (DVI) or 7050 (hdmi) chipset

Biostar as one

BIOSTAR TForce TF7025-M2 AM2 NVIDIA 69.99$

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) 54.99$

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 65.99$

total cost 190.97

of course you will need hd and case. i've got about 12 of these builds out there im going to try and see if i can get one to test with ubuntu and xbmc

That'll be very interesting to know what it'll achive with XBMC. Please let us know the results.

i can pretty much guarantee you arnt going to get stable playback at real 720p videos, some of the mkv files run ok, but you will notice quite a bit of dropped frames, this might not bother some but to the trained eye you will notice it.

I'm going to start a post of 2 clips that I would like everyone to try and provide feedback and system specs.

stevellion Wrote:I just spec'd this up, preloaded with Ubuntu so half the work is done and I'm not wasting money on Windows.. but It's key for me to achieve H264 720p and ideally 1080p, otherwise, I'll just keep running my Xbox!

PROCESSOR N-Series-Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)
MEMORY 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
HARD DRIVE 160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache
GRAPHICS CARD 128MB nVidia® GeForce® 8300GS Turbocache graphics card

Does anyone know if this graphics card comes with DVI output - (just want my TV likes... and compatible with HDMI)

Cheers,

this is what I use.. hdmi, dvi and spdif which can run into your spdif out from the motherboard and transfer the audio via the hdmi cable.

http://www.provantage.com/msi-nx8500gt-m...STI0A9.htm

gateway69 Wrote:i can pretty much guarantee you arnt going to get stable playback at real 720p videos, some of the mkv files run ok, but you will notice quite a bit of dropped frames, this might not bother some but to the trained eye you will notice it.

I'd be suprised if an AMD 4000+ cant handle that. I have a 4000+ and, under windows, it only shows 30% utilization when playing 720p material.

dexx Wrote:I'd be suprised if an AMD 4000+ cant handle that. I have a 4000+ and, under windows, it only shows 30% utilization when playing 720p material.

Tried with a FFMpeg decoder ?