[jwhitt12]

I am wondering. If I have a 1.5ghz computer and put a good display card w/512 or 1gb of memory on it. Will the gpu handle the display stuff even though the computer is slow?

Thank you...........

[numb7rs]

It is possible, but we would need to know a bit more about the system before a definitive answer can be given. Do you know the make and model of the CPU? How old is it? Any other information would be good.

[jwhitt12]

The processor is an amd athlon 1500+ and is 1.5ghz I don't know much about it except it was on my floor and I know its working. Its OLD and has agp instead of pcie (good agp cards are kinda hard to find these days). I am running it with a linux drive I use to test with (I would probably go with xp if I did this) This was just a curiosity on my part.

Thank you for the reply!

[numb7rs]

Damn, that is old! I would not put money on that being able to run XBMC smoothly in HD. Sorry.

[jwhitt12]

I know, I was just wondering. I will give it away to somebody who needs one. It will work just fine for net access. I have, however, always been wondering about that as modern gpu's pretty much take the video load off.

Anyway, thanks again!

[waldo22]

The answer is 'YES' it will work great, as long as you have 1 GB of RAM and a video card that supports VDPAU and that has at least 512MB RAM and you run Linux or Live.

There have been reports of adding a PCI GeForce 8400GS with 512MB RAM to a Pentium III (!!!) 600Mhz machine achieving 1080p playback! Fanart and GUI can be a bit sluggish, but it works...

With Windows XP, the answer is NO (at least for HD content, SD will run fine).

XP doesn't support GPU accelerated decoding unless you use the special DSPlayer branch, and I think Vista or Win7 may be too much for that machine without serious tweaking.

-Wes

[jwhitt12]

Thank you for the reply. Seems like a LOT of work and it may still not work. I am going to simply give the box away but I REALLY appreciate the information. I built my own system a couple of years ago and its works great. I am now thinking of putting one together for a daughter and was considering getting one for cheap. You have changed my mind, and probably relieved my guilt <G>. I guess I will build her a good one.

I am retired and people give me their old stuff to fix up and give away so I always have 5 or 6 boxes sitting around.

Thanks again!

[nemek]

Pentium III (!!!) 600Mhz machine achieving 1080p

are there any proofs? cuz for me its really hard to believe - this cpu is at least few times slower than anemic atom - according to ion benchmarks (that can be found on net) - full hd playback use more than 20% cpu.

[waldo22]

are there any proofs? cuz for me its really hard to believe - this cpu is at least few times slower than anemic atom - according to ion benchmarks (that can be found on net) - full hd playback use more than 20% cpu.

I remember it being posted here, but can't find it at the moment.

We do know that XBMC can run fine with a lite skin (aka PM-III or PM-III HD) on a Pentium III with 64MB of RAM (aka Xbox).

As long as you aren't too heavy on fanart, actor thumbs, etc, I would think a computer with 512MB - 1GB RAM and a decent 8400GS PCI card would do fine.

There are plenty of reports of folks using the PCI 8400GS with 512 RAM for 1080P HD with older CPUs, but only one that I can recall of it working on a processor that old, and I can't find it...

-Wes

[nemek]

I just cant imagine full hd part - it is decoded on gpu but still a lot of cpu power is needed

[SpectreX]

. That was in the past, when 480p was the max resolution the Xbox could display. Modern XBMC skins use 1080p textures and backdrops, that require more than that P3 could dish out.

Also, the Xbox had a dedicated OS, which was lighter than you full desktop OS like Windows/Ubuntu, even a minimal Ubuntu install (like Live).