[xeonicxpression]

I'm planning on buying the new Dell E6400 and it has the option of NVIDIA® Quadro® NVS 160M1 256MB DDR2 or Mobile Intel® GMA 4500MHD. Which one would you choose, for best XBMC compatability? I'll be running XBMC on Vista. It isn't going to be dedicated to XBMC. I just want to be able to play with it on my laptop, when I'm not at my main PC. I also don't plan on running any games on it. Any input would be appriciated.

[xeonicxpression]

No one? There has to be someone who has some input.

[Geeba]

How much are they?

I just bought a Dell 1530 XPS lappy... I love it! feels really well made and I spec'd it up to.... 2.6Ghz Core2, 4Gig RAM and a dedicated 256mb 8600GT nVidia GFX card... runs XBMC Win a treat.... so not only can I watch all my movies/media when I work away the onboard HDMI and S-Video mean I can connect up to pretty much any TV.... hacked the Dell media button to... now launches XBMC....

[Gamester17]

I'm planning on buying the new Dell E6400 and it has the option of NVIDIA® Quadro® NVS 160M1 256MB DDR2 or Mobile Intel® GMA 4500MHD. Which one would you choose, for best XBMC compatability?

Doesn't matter, both those are good enough for XBMC, I would choose the one with the fastest CPU.

[pantherman007]

With the feature-freeze now in place, is there an opinion on whether Intel X3100 graphics with a decent (>2.0 GHz dual core) CPU is a "good enough" combo? Judging from the previous forum posts that chipset seems to be right on the bubble for XBMC use...

I'm still eyeing a Dell Studio Hybrid XBMC build, but its older graphics have me a little worried it might fall short.

[Gamester17]

Yes Intel X3100 graphics is good enough as well, (this is all in the manual and FAQ you know).

[pantherman007]

Yes Intel X3100 graphics is good enough as well, (this is all in the manual and FAQ you know).

Sorry. I searched on 3100 and X3100 in the wiki and nothing came back. In the FAQ I only saw OpenGL version info, nothing on specific chipsets.

With beta & stable releases in the near future and presumably more users coming and asking the same question, would expanded documentation on HW requirements/compatibility be helpful in the manual or do you think that's unnecessary? (That's an offer to help create it if I can get off my ass, not a request for you to do it)

[Gamester17]

Sorry. I searched on 3100 and X3100 in the wiki and nothing came back. In the FAQ I only saw OpenGL version info, nothing on specific chipsets.

OpenGL is a standard, which means if a GPU claims its hardware and drivers support the version of OpenGL that XBMC requires then it does, simple as that.

So for practical reasons we can't maintain a list of all chipsets/graphic-controllers that support OpenGL 1.3 + GSLS and newer as that would be thousands and thousands, with new chips coming out almost every month, it would be impossible for us to maintain a such list.

...it like when you go to a store and buy a PC game, the box only read "Requires at least DirectX 9.1" support because DirectX is a stanard, it does not list all chipsets/graphic-controllers on the box (nor even on their website for that matter).