Adsolute Min Specs

godtabh

Whats the absolute min specs the MCE will work on?

Have a xbox 360 and an old pc and I wnat to dip my hand into builing one on small parts before I spend the big bucks.

SouperComputer

My main machine was built from "leftovers" too. With the execption of the fortron source PSU (120mm Fan & quiet) and an XP120 CPU fan to keep things cool and quiet.

You'll get away with 1.6Ghz and 512Mb. Ive been running a 1.7Ghz @ 2.0 with 512. For a good while I had that machine at stock. Today im upgrading it to 768 with 2.53Ghz @ 3.06Ghz, or 1.8 @ 2.8 I havent decided which yet. Not becuase MCE needs it as such, but to help speed up the removal of ads from recorded shows, transcoding etc and also so that I can watch HD content without dropping frames! If you plan watching HD content yoiu will need to aim for 2.8Ghz or therabouts. The chips I am using ATM are all intel, but the AMD equivilants are more than up to the job.

CPU wise I recon you could go as low as 1.2Ghz, below that and you are asking for trouble. Ideally you will want a direct X 9 compliant graphics card. Nvidia FX5200 is a popular one. You can hack the registry to circumvent this, but if you combine a 1.2Ghz CPU with a non DX 9 graphics you could cause yourself serious headaches.

MCE is pretty bloated, so I wouldnt go skimping on RAM. 512 is good, 768 even better. Below 512MB with MCE will break your heart, espcially as you start to use it more and install more RAM-Resident programs such as Dcut.

godtabh

SouperComputer wrote:

My main machine was built from "leftovers" too. With the execption of the fortron source PSU (120mm Fan & quiet) and an XP120 CPU fan to keep things cool and quiet.

You'll get away with 1.6Ghz and 512Mb. Ive been running a 1.7Ghz @ 2.0 with 512. For a good while I had that machine at stock. Today im upgrading it to 768 with 2.53Ghz @ 3.06Ghz, or 1.8 @ 2.8 I havent decided which yet. Not becuase MCE needs it as such, but to help speed up the removal of ads from recorded shows, transcoding etc and also so that I can watch HD content without dropping frames! If you plan watching HD content yoiu will need to aim for 2.8Ghz or therabouts. The chips I am using ATM are all intel, but the AMD equivilants are more than up to the job.

CPU wise I recon you could go as low as 1.2Ghz, below that and you are asking for trouble. Ideally you will want a direct X 9 compliant graphics card. Nvidia FX5200 is a popular one. You can hack the registry to circumvent this, but if you combine a 1.2Ghz CPU with a non DX 9 graphics you could cause yourself serious headaches.

MCE is pretty bloated, so I wouldnt go skimping on RAM. 512 is good, 768 even better. Below 512MB with MCE will break your heart, espcially as you start to use it more and install more RAM-Resident programs such as Dcut.

I have a P3 just taking up some space and was gona mess with that. Ram & GFX I dont think will be a problem (just have to buy some new ones) but the processor might catch me out. its only 1ghz! More reasrch to be done!

8T8

You can pick up various modules of PC133 for your P3 at pretty reasonable prices from Shop4memory. There is a Transcend 512MB stick going for €78 & any basic DX9 graphics card you can get your hands on will suffice there is a B-Grade GeForce FX2000 going for €22 on Komplett.

A good sized hard drive is something you might want to consider though depending on how much recording of TV shows you plan to do.

A few Google searches have found that with a 1Ghz P3 it is strongly recommend getting a good TV tuner with hardware assisted MPEG-2 encoding support but overall it should just be able to handle MCE.

SouperComputer

Theres no harm in giving it a go with the PIII, if the mobo is good, you could overclock it too. Another 200Mhz could make a big difference. I tried to drop my CPU to 1ghz ish just now, but the lowest FSB I can run is 100x4

That said, for 60-100 bills you could probably pickup a used S478 mobo+chip on boards.

Give it a go, disable the "fisher price" graphics, disable uneeded services etc etc.

MythTV will run no problem on it, but there are two things that may cause headaches for you:

1. Its linux only
2. It wont work with your XB360

You could also have a look at GB-PVR software. Its less resource intensive than MCE, its also free and you could throw it on top of windows 2000 since specs are tight.

You could use Windows media connect to access the media from the PC. Not sure how well it works though.

godtabh

As I said I have a case and just want to play around with it and since I got an xbox I thought a MCE machine would be a good idea.

All I want to do is stream videos etc to start off then a bit of recording and see now it goes

mossym

gb-pvr, a free alternative to mce, runs smoothly on a 900mhz processor, i h ad it running on one until last night..

have an atlon 64 3700+ now, but mainly for hd..

godtabh

mossym wrote:

gb-pvr, a free alternative to mce, runs smoothly on a 900mhz processor, i h ad it running on one until last night..

have an atlon 64 3700+ now, but mainly for hd..

Is that a seperate OS or just something that runs on top of Windows?

Will look into it

What specs was your system and what could it do?

SouperComputer

GB-PVR is a windows application.



http://www.gbpvr.com/

Its free too.

Most MPEG2 hardware cards need 1.2Ghz min with windows, so thats where your system requirements are coming from.

mossym

it was a 900mhz amd thunderbird, years old, with 640mb sdram, the old pc133 stuff...300g hard drive, and an pny/nvidia 6200 which did component out to my HD rptv.

i didn't use timeshifting, but it recorded flawlessly, played all standard def videos, wouldn't do high def obviously..took a few seconds to open a folder that had a couple of hundred mp3s in there but played them all fine...all the video and music are stored on a NAS on my network so it streamed them just fine..

it'll also wake itself up from hibernation for a recording and shut down again if you set it up right