Do you think a Pentium II @ 450 is a good HTPC? (1 Viewer)

[Javier_Huerta]

It has 384 MB RAM, a Radeon 7500 All-in-one AGP card, a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card, and the ubiquitous DVD. I will use it with an Infocus DLP-340 projector.

Do you think 450 MHz is enough? Or should I try to get a faster computer? I'll be using Windows XP and optimize the whole deal for using it with DVD.

 

[Scott L]

Hmmm, I've heard 500-550 is the safe zone but if you tweak the OS and registry I *think* 450 will be just fine. Has anyone tried a 450 Mhz? Everything else sounds great though.

 

[John Thomas]

Wasn't the P2-450 the last Pentium that wasn't locked (for overclocking)? I know there's other ways to do it but I thought with this chip you could do it simply through BIOS.

 

[MikeyWeitz]

If all you are doing with it is using to play DVD's on, then you will be fine w/a 450mhz.

 

[Andrew Chong]

As a comparison, I'm using a P2-400Mhz, 256MB RAM, Hollywood Plus card, and a Sony DVD-ROM 16X within Windows XP. It works great!

 

[Javier_Huerta]

Thanks Andrew! I hope everything will be fine, then
John, I think I can overclock my 450 to 500, since that's the fastest speed the motherboard will support. I *think* I'll do it (once I remove the internal modem, my twin voodoo IIs and the network card).
Voodoo IIs. Wow, my PC is quite old
Thanks all!

 

[Dave F]

I'm using a P2-400Mhz, 256MB RAM, Hollywood Plus card...

The Hollywood Plus card takes a huuuge load off the CPU, so running without a hardware decoder board will have higher CPU requirements.

Another thing to consider is if you will ever want to play Divx. That will also require higher system requirements.

-Dave