[jlewin_80]

Hey Everyone, I'm new to the forum and to XBMC. I have done quite a bit of playing around and have become rather obsessed now with setting up an ulltimate media center but have a few questions regarding my hardware and setup.

I have installed XBMC on my old xp machine.
P4 2.9 GHz Cpu
1.5 GB Ram
Ati All in Wonder x1900 w/ 256 Ram
- Also has component out which seems rare and is nescessary for my rear projection TV. It has HDMI but doesnt seem to fuction.
500 GB HDD
750 W PS

Now I'm guessing through reading other posts that this wont handle HD but I've also had quite a few problems with XBMC crashing upon changing views or even entering different library's. It's become quite frustrating and I've tried reinstalling a few times with no luck. I dont know what the problem could be.

With this hardware would I be able to set up a stand alone machine with no linux experience what so ever, or would this be more of a hassle that it's worth with my ati card and lack of knowledge. Would it improve performance greatly by ditching the windows OS. If windows should work fine with this, than what could be causing my crashing issues?

I will be upgrading my maching to something more powerfull and less noisy when finances allow (this could be a while with wifey in school), but in the meantime want a smooth running XMBC so that I can convince her to ditch TVersity w PS3. Thanks for any help and advice in advance.

[jhsrennie]

I haven't found any significant XBMC performance differences between Linux and Windows. I suggest your decision should be influenced by other factors such as what other apps you use and the cost of a Windows licence.

JR

[SlaveUnit]

Your only option with that OS and hardware is to give the DSPlayer branch a go. The native brand with DXVA2 wont use GPU offload because you need Vista or Windows 7. The DSPlayer one will use GPU offload with XP. Just make sure you do enable DXVA in the ffdshow (DSPlayer) settings. 720p material "may" play if that video card has DXVA support.

[GJones]

Base your decision more on whether you will be using this box exclusively as an XBMC device or as a desktop. If you require it to be a desktop and are not familiar with Linux, use Windows. If you are using this installation as a dedicated device, Linux will provide better performance for most hardware. As I have focused on NVidia hardware due to VDPAU support, I cannot speak to ATI hardware acceleration specifically. But with Linux you can avoid the overhead of the desktop and a number of specific processes consuming resources in a fairly straightforward manner.

[jlewin_80]

Thanks for your advice guys! But this is becoming very frustrating......after three weeks now of searching, I found someone with a fix for my slow database issue, thank God. However now that I have actually started building up a library, I have run into issues with the program crashing frequently....Argghhhh! Soooo, I tried running a XBMC live, and after entering login and password, the program would not boot. I'm guessing this is because of my ATI graphics card. So it looks like I'm gonna have to keep fighting with this program to get it working to my liking. At least I'm learning a lot in the process.