Turn my old PC into a HTPC

[kaispeth]

I am building a brand new, fully loaded PC. That leaves me with my old one.

Since my 'old'ish' system is still Ok, I am going to move it into a new HTPC case from Silverstone.
It is about 3 years old.
Gigabyte 8KNXP rev 2 board. Socket 478 with a P4 3GHZ HT CPU
2 gigs of DDR400 RAM. 2 Seagate SATA 150 drives in RAID 0 and another Seagate 750GB connected to a newer 3GB SATA II card.
600 W Rosewill Power (that's new)
I have an ATI Radeon 1600 card (AGP 8x) 512 MB

As I will use this HTPC next to my nice Hometheater I will connect it to my 56" Samsung DLP HD 1080i TV.

I will do a fresh install and just run Win Media Center. I got an OEM version that came with my Dell Laptop.

What do you suggest I can do to give my old PC it a bit more kick.
Can't do anything about RAM, CPU, AGP only unless I buy a new MOBO, CPU and RAM......

That's why I thought I get the best AGP card out there to allow for nice DVD playback, some light gaming on the big screen, TV recording etc.

Is there a better AGP card out there than the ATI RADEON x1600?

Thanks

 

[Anoobis]

If you're looking at a 512MB X1600, then I'd also consider an X1650Pro. Otherwise dump the 512MB X1600 and find a cheaper 256MB variant as 512MB on an X1600Pro is about as useful as tits on a bull.

Depending on the game, I'm not altogether certain how well an X1600Pro or an X1650Pro will hold up at 1080i resolutions. You'll probably have to settle on lower resolutions if possible. Either card should suffice for movies but gaming performance will suffer.

The rest of the system seems pretty much maxed out for it's capabilities without updating the platform.