2009-12-18, 16:55
I'll try to answer some of your questions, I haven't used an ION based system before so someone else can cover those. There are also other dedicated threads to this.
2. They can be VERY noisy depending on what you pick. If you do go this route make sure you read reviews that have a noise section to them. Something like the new ATI 5770/5750 are cool and fairly quiet. I don't have much experience with NVIDIA lately. If it is just for XBMC you can find passively cooled GPUs that would work.
3. I have an athlon 64 4800+ which is fairly old. I can watch movies in XBMC and have another session running with torrents and notice no slowdowns. I think something like E5300 would handle some modest background tasks.
5. If you want the graphics card just for VDPAU then that would be overkill. A fairly modest card can accelerate 1080p i believe.
6. I've never run into any of these issues. I guess it depends on your source.
7. I've run it on both. XP worked perfectly. 7 had some issues with an old audigy sound card but that's about it.
8. I use a MCE remote and it works really well. A bit of setup with event ghost but after that it is working flawlessly. Haven't used a harmony however. Always seemed like a fair amount of work to set up.
2. They can be VERY noisy depending on what you pick. If you do go this route make sure you read reviews that have a noise section to them. Something like the new ATI 5770/5750 are cool and fairly quiet. I don't have much experience with NVIDIA lately. If it is just for XBMC you can find passively cooled GPUs that would work.
3. I have an athlon 64 4800+ which is fairly old. I can watch movies in XBMC and have another session running with torrents and notice no slowdowns. I think something like E5300 would handle some modest background tasks.
5. If you want the graphics card just for VDPAU then that would be overkill. A fairly modest card can accelerate 1080p i believe.
6. I've never run into any of these issues. I guess it depends on your source.
7. I've run it on both. XP worked perfectly. 7 had some issues with an old audigy sound card but that's about it.
8. I use a MCE remote and it works really well. A bit of setup with event ghost but after that it is working flawlessly. Haven't used a harmony however. Always seemed like a fair amount of work to set up.
