Turning an old PC to an HTPC
#16
Dump the Radeon and get a 8400 or better Nvidia card. It will work like a champ Smile
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#17
Ouch. Last two posts confirms it.

Best hope is one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

A 512mb 8400 GS PCI card. Just avoid the AGP slot. The legacy of that slot is apparently tragic.

It has been confirmed here on the forum that such a configuration will work with XBMC Live and play 1080p files. Linux can do it.

Honestly then if you really want Windows 7 your best chance is probably to do what I did: replace the mobo.

Get one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813138174

And suddenly you are using DDR2 ram and have a real PCI Express slot. I combined my mobo with 2 gigs of DDR2 ram and a 9500 GT card I got for like $40 on Newegg.

I mean, it is still a Pentium 4 so I don't expect a lot but it works for me as a semi-silent bedroom HTPC (as I can load the case with large silent fans) that plays my meanest stuff.

Good luck!!!
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#18
I got a palit 9400GT (see mc2 in my sig). On the older hardware I'd reccommend the linux live install to HDD.

Or if she wants to do other things then Ubuntu + XBMC, I got my mum a linux netbook for her birthday last year and she has only ever had 1 or 2 problems with it which I was able to walk her through fixing..

if you can I'd give the HTPC a static IP and and use port forwarding on her router for port 22. Then you can ssh in and fix things remotely.
MC1 (SD & HD): Asus A8N SLI, AMD x2 4600+, 2GB DDR 400 Cosair, Palit Nvidia 9400GT 1GB (Passive), ARTIC 500W PSU, Lian Li PC-C32B, Samsung 250GB SATA
MC2 (SD&HD): RaspberryPi
MC3 (SD&HD): RaspberryPi
NAS1: HP Prolient Microserver N40L 2Gb Ram, 250Gb OS Disk, 1x2TB HDD ext4, 5.25" to 3.5" disk drive added to ODD Slot for OS disk

Blog: http://ninet.org
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