What PC to use? (1 Viewer)

[virgoan]

I am on my first experience with building a HTPC. I currently have a Pentium III 733 Mhz PC with 384MB RAM, which I mostly use for day to day activities and it has other developement tools. I am planning on getting another machine preferably a Intel Core2 duo for my day to day activities. My questions are;

1) Should I just upgrade my Pentium III with a nice video card, RAM and use it for the HTPC project.
2) Should I otherwise plan to get another machine Intel Core 2 Duo for HTPC and also use it for my day to day needs and coding such.

How feasible is plan 2, in which case I will just remote desktop to it from my old machine and use it for my routine work when I am not using the TV.

Please help...

 

[Ramshackles]

I've tried using my main pc as a HTPC, and let me tell you it's not very appealing. A HTPC should in my opinion only be used as that.

You can always experiment with adding ram and a gfx card for your current and use that as a HTPC if your low on cash, but a HTPC doesn't have to be expensive. All depends on your requirements.

I know that I mess around a lot on my main pc, I like to keep my HTPC in a good shape so don't mess much with it.

 

[Hi There]

Virgoan, that Pentium machine will be fine when it comes to playing DVD's, and should be able to run DIVX/XVID files fairly well, so long as they are not HD and you are not doing a lot of post-processing.

As far as a replacement, if I were in the market right now, I'd go with a fairly cheap processor, and couple it with some flavor of ATI video card that has built-in HDCP compliance and acceleration for modern high-def formats like VC1 and h.264 (HD 2600, and 3XXX series...the 2900 isn't something you want, and the 2400 has some driver problems ATI needs to sort out, but the fix is on the way). These cards are running quite cheap and coupled with, say, an Athlon 64 3000+ or better, will give you a machine capable of handling anything out there with regard to decoding, up to and including 1080p output. Something like a Core 2 processor will run cooler, potentially quieter, and consume less power...and cost a little more, but there are really good deals in the lower range Core 2's as well.

Regardless of whether your machine is hooked to an HDTV at the moment, it probably will be one day.

 

[Ramshackles]

You could get a cpu equal to or above 3 ghz dual core, 1-2 gb of ram (depending on os) and a motherboard with hdmi/hdcp and you'd be set aswell.

The cpu would be able to decode h.264 1080p alone, or you could opt to buy a hd 2600 from ati which are available cheap aswell, even passively cooled.

 

[QuaiBoy]

I moved my faster PC to be the MP box (see my system on left) and use a PIII 500mhz and remote access software to use the faster PC when I'm not watching TV. When using the machine remotely it "feels" just as fast as using it locally. I tried the PIII 500mhz as the MP box with a TNT2 32mb video card and it was close to what I needed, but not quite enough. I have a laptop I use as my main machine that I'm typing on right now. If you want to build a new machine, you should be able to for well under $200 (case/ps/board/proc/fan) that runs MP better than a lot of the systems being used by others.

Good luck.

-Evan