Xlobby with P3?

by **mexanh** on Mon May 17, 2004 12:43 am

Hi everyone,
Is it good to use xlobby in a P3 450MHz (550 MHz overclocked)PC ? I am thinking of turning my old P3 into my HTPC. In other words, what is the minimum hardware requirement? Any advices are appreciated. Thanks!

by **jowaldo** on Mon May 17, 2004 2:00 am

What are you going to use it for? Just music? If so it should be fine. Movies (regular ol' dvd's) should even be ok too. It may lag a bit and take a while for xlobby to initially start up, but after that should be fine.

by **mexanh** on Mon May 17, 2004 3:33 am

I would like to play music, DVD, VCD... things that xlobby can do. Will it affect the quality in anyway? I.E skipping or freezing while playing DVD... It has ATI AIW RAGE 128 AGP and Sound Blaster Live! Value for video and audio. Will that be good enough? Is there a noticable difference between ATI AIW 9800pro and RAGE 128? I am having both of them. One for P4 and one for P3. I don't see any difference. May be you can

by **Roscoe62** on Mon May 17, 2004 3:37 am

Mexanh,

If I recall correctly there was an HTPC building guide on AVSForum which recommended a minimum CPU speed of around 600MHz to ensure smooth DVD playback in software (which is what we're talking about here) without dropping frames.

You might find it works OK for you, but just be aware you're right on the very edge of the performance curve with a 450-550MHz CPU.

However, CD/MP3 playback will be a piece of cake for that machine.

Good luck!

by **mexanh** on Mon May 17, 2004 3:46 am

IC. I guess I have to use P4 then. That's more safe. Thanks guys

by **jmv** on Mon May 17, 2004 2:22 pm

My 800 MHz P3 worked fine for Xlobby...where it choked was updating the PPC screens...the interface was unuseable and would freeze over my PPC...moved Xlobby over to my 2.4G P4 and the interface was zippy and all was good.

mv

by **Roscoe62** on Mon May 17, 2004 8:02 pm

I'm currently using a Celeron 1GHz CPU for my HTPC. For DVD playback it's fine, and XLobby has been working OK so far, but I like the idea of the extra headroom a faster CPU will give. I'll be upgrading when I can afford to.

by **dalanik** on Tue May 18, 2004 9:11 am

Right now using PIII 1.2Ghz (HP notebook) and everything works fine... Music, DVDs, DIVX videos... (not a PPC user though)

by **shuban0** on Wed May 19, 2004 2:33 am

I'm running Xlobby with XP Pro on my 500Mhz P3. Good 'ol 100fsb, Slot 1 or 2 or what ever they call those monsters of a processor back then.

Anyways its working great with no problems at all.

by **Colby** on Wed May 19, 2004 4:16 am

I am currently using a p4 3.3 Ghz 800fsb hyperthreading with 4gig of ddr ram and dual scsi harddrives, 400mhz dual processer graphics card with 512 MB of onboard memory and a 16x cd/dvd-+r/rw recorder. Everything works fine.

by **Roscoe62** on Wed May 19, 2004 7:50 pm

So what's the view like from up there Colby?