[Seoras]

Does the Asrock ION 330 bring anything to the table that would make it a better buy than the similarly priced Aspire X1300 (from an XBMC Linux perspective)?

As far as I can tell the Aspire X1300 includes a little more bang for the buck in a larger (and noisier) enclosure. I guess I'm just curious whether the ION platform provides a better XBMC GUI experience than the Geforce 8200 in the Aspire or whether the Athlon x2 makes up for the difference.

I see that the Asrock is very common amongst users in the forums and seems pretty straightforward to get up and running quickly, and I did see a couple of folks using the Aspire but no real details of it's performance.

Aspire X1300

I was looking at the following configuration

• AMD Athlon™ X2 Dual-Core Processor 7450
  
• 3GB DDR2 SDRAM
  
• Integrated NVIDIA® GeForce® 8200 graphics
  

I'm hoping to get reasonable performance out of it, enough to run Aeon without too much struggling at least

Thanks,

Seoras.

[Flinty]

Don't think that 8200 has VDPAU or any sort of video acceleration ... But maybe the CPU is good enough.

[podiboq]

Don't think that 8200 has VDPAU or any sort of video acceleration ... But maybe the CPU is good enough.

According to Wiki the 8200 does support VDPAU.

[Seoras]

I ended up grabbing one of those Aspires and setting it up last night. Works great with Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 and the latest xbmc from svn. I can confirm that VDPAU works as expected, although I couldn't get the high quality VDPAU upscaling working (crashes xbmc)... other methods of upscaling did work however.

The box itself runs very quiet and hdmi video worked out of the box. The nvidia hdmi audio isn't working just yet but I suspect that is a regression in the latest karmic build. So far I am more than pleased with it, tonight I'll fire some true 1080p video at it and see if I can hurt it some

[Bedpan]

Would love to hear more about how things work for you Seoras. I have been looking at a refurbished Acer Box similiar to the one you have, but keep hesitating on pulling the trigger as I have concerns about how it is going to work. How was setting up XBMC, are you using Live or running it on a distro?

That said not being a big linux user I am nervous buying any hardware that will rely on VDPAU to pump out 1080p simply because of my skill set in getting it running and keeping it running.

Your insight is appreciated,

Mike

I ended up grabbing one of those Aspires and setting it up last night. Works great with Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 and the latest xbmc from svn. I can confirm that VDPAU works as expected, although I couldn't get the high quality VDPAU upscaling working (crashes xbmc)... other methods of upscaling did work however.

The box itself runs very quiet and hdmi video worked out of the box. The nvidia hdmi audio isn't working just yet but I suspect that is a regression in the latest karmic build. So far I am more than pleased with it, tonight I'll fire some true 1080p video at it and see if I can hurt it some

[Seoras]

So far I have to say it is a great box. I got the the Athlon 64 x2 with 3GB of Ram version since the cost was so low for the hardware included.

• Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) installs and works out of the box.
  
• Nvidia driver installs and works without issue.
  
• HDMI Video+Audio works out of the box (I had to disable normal audio in the BIOS for HDMI audio to work).
  
• VDPAU Rendering works out of the box.
  
• XBMC Full SVN installs and works without issue.
  
• Aeon works (could be a bit faster though).
  
• Other Fan Art skins work great, MediaStream etc.
  
• 1080P Blu-Ray rips work great with around 7-10% CPU utilization on both cores. (50-70% without VDPAU).
  
• eSATA input for adding additional storage (no room in case for additional drives).
  
• Runs very quiet, fast boot up.
  
• No S/PDIF Output, Only Analog 5.1 or HDMI audio out.
  
• 4GB Max memory, and you would need to lose the 1GB stick taking up the second slot.
  
• No PCI Slots, only 1 PCI-E x16 and 1 PCI-E x1, Low Profile Cards only.
  

All in all I am very happy with it. For the price it makes a great HTPC, if I could change anything it would be to have some better audio output options and to have integrated Bluetooth (I added a dongle for remote support).

Seoras.

[Seoras]

Bedpan, to clarify, I really wouldn't worry about the Linux or VDPAU side of things.. Getting Ubuntu installed with the NVDIA drivers is point and click simple, no terminal work required. Updates will be automatic via the Ubuntu update process so you shouldn't have to patch or maintain source code for anything.

Once Ubuntu is updated installing XBMC from SVN can be point and click simple if you use the unofficial builds from http://sshcs.com/xbmc/. Once installed you just have to add xbmc to your startup options (there is a gui tool for this) and then set your XBMC options to enable shutdown etc (via the xbmc gui).

It really was ridiculously simple to get up and running Installing skins, Milkdrop presets for Projectm etc is also really easy, and even if you are new to linux you shouldn't have any problems since it is the same general process as any other OS.

I'm still playing around with it, i.e. I might try a minimal install etc, or switch to compiling from svn directly rather than use the debs. I'm also still looking at the audio out pieces since I'm unfamiliar with that side of the fence and looking to buy a receiver. However I had the HTPC out of it's box, installed, configured, hooked up and playing back 1080P content from an updated fully scraped library within a couple of hours without headaches