Will this work for HTPC ???

Wenty

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 28, 2004
Messages
460
This is from parts leftover from old builds I still need a DVD drive.

Panasonic Plasma 42" EDTV <=== (It's almost a HD TV) 1080i
Mother Board - BIOSTAR TA790GX 128M
CPU - AMD FX62
GPU - 8800GTX
Memmory - 2GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800
Using On board sound Realtek HD Audio
HD - 80GB Barracuda 7200.7

It's not pretty but is it workable ??? :eek:
 
What are you thinking? Man everything on that list is garbage! ;) :D Just yanking your chain. From all the threads I have read on here and other boards your parts list is perfectly fine. You may want to add a larger storage drive if you plan on adding a tuner card and turning it into a DVR. Also review the flash 10.1 release and see if the GTX is one of the cards that can be used for hardware acceleration.
 
I'm not familiar with the CPU, is it this one?

If so, it looks like you have a decent setup. It'll work, but to an extent I'm sure. Do you have an outside source to host movies? 80gb is very small now-a-days.
 
That should work fine for an HTPC. You can add more storage.

Do you plan on gaming with the PC? if not, you can replace the cpu and video card with one using less wattage.
 
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Yea the CPU is an insane 125w and it's 90nm, so it takes up a lot of power and will heat up quick.
 
The CPU will put out a massive amount of heat and the video card is kind of garbage since it doesn't offer full hardware acceleration of HD material. That means it's going to be offloading the hardest parts of decoding to the CPU which is going to heat up pretty quick just watching a Blu ray movie.

You can switch out the video card for something that does 100% acceleration or sell it all (nearly all, some parts you can reuse) and buy something that will actually work well as an HTPC.
 
I had an EDTV plasma and the resolution was to low to do much besides watch SD videos, even though it supports 1080i it is still running 640x480 (or something similar) so it looks pretty bad and text is nearly unreadable. If you sit pretty far away then HD video may look alright but don't plan to do anything like websurf on it.
 
The CPU will put out a massive amount of heat and the video card is kind of garbage since it doesn't offer full hardware acceleration of HD material. That means it's going to be offloading the hardest parts of decoding to the CPU which is going to heat up pretty quick just watching a Blu ray movie.

You can switch out the video card for something that does 100% acceleration or sell it all (nearly all, some parts you can reuse) and buy something that will actually work well as an HTPC.

thought all 8 series cards accellerated 1080p? maybe only partially i guess like youre saying. however, his system is plenty fast to not even need the video card to accelerate media. i agree though overall his system is a hot one... watch your power bill.
 
Thanks guys..... I was only planning on using it to watch DVD's on my TV..... lol. :p
 
thought all 8 series cards accellerated 1080p? maybe only partially i guess like youre saying. l.

Only the 8800GTX, 8800GTS 320MB and 640MB models could not hardware accellerate video.
 
Only the 8800GTX, 8800GTS 320MB and 640MB models could not hardware accellerate video.

I think the Ultra is in the same bucket, too.

Basically all the G80 core cards could not.

I think it's because the 8800gtx, 8800ts (320/640), and 8800 Ultra has PureVideo 1.0 (nvidia's video decoding stuff - ATi calls their's UVD).

And all other 8xxx cards have PureVideo 2, except for the 8400gs - which has PureVideo 3 (g98 core, not the g86 core version).
 
I think the Ultra is in the same bucket, too.

Basically all the G80 core cards could not.

I think it's because the 8800gtx, 8800ts (320/640), and 8800 Ultra has PureVideo 1.0 (nvidia's video decoding stuff - ATi calls their's UVD).

And all other 8xxx cards have PureVideo 2, except for the 8400gs - which has PureVideo 3 (g98 core, not the g86 core version).

nice and confusing, thanks for the clarification. :)
 
If it's just for DVD's why not avoid all the power usage and buy a DVD player for $30-50

Or I can just use my XBOX 360 that I don't use..... lol. :p

I'm just trying to figure out what I can use my old computer for..... May just throw it in the trash.
 
Or I can just use my XBOX 360 that I don't use..... lol. :p

I'm just trying to figure out what I can use my old computer for..... May just throw it in the trash.

Part it out on here. I'm sure you'll find someone.
 
There's more to it then that but he, mostly, got it right. And yes, very confusing but what do you expect from NV?? :p :D

its all just a ploy to sell more video cards with less features. trick people into getting what they dont want, leaving something they need:(
 
Or I can just use my XBOX 360 that I don't use..... lol. :p

I'm just trying to figure out what I can use my old computer for..... May just throw it in the trash.

then use it! power draw wont be THAT bad, compared to normal htpc's its about like running 3 of them haha, but at least you can play games... and of course it draws basically nothing while sleeping/hibernating. itll work plenty good as an htpc, like we said it'll just be a little power hungry and warm-running but since its a 'free' system, why the heck not.
 
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