[nak45z]

I have been surfing the forum looking for info on how to upgrade my pc to a windows media center edition. I got a recent gateway pc, w/ pentium 4, and 200 gb hd, and 3.2 or 3.4 ghz processor I guess, and 1 gig of ram..... is it possible to do that

[talldude123]

your PC is good enough to run media center, thats for sure, but whats your video card?

if you have xp home installed, just put in the media center cd, and install!

i dont know if you can upgrade from win xp pro to media center, though.

[nak45z]

I do want to upgrade the video card (for dual monitor/ s-video output), sound card( for digital optical output/ for yamaha receiver), and along with the coaxial input card( for the TW cable input).... and i do have the xp home edition that comes preinstalled with current gateway pc's. and i found everything in newegg. will i be running to any problems or would it be better to buy one media center ready.....

[talldude123]

well your pc is fast enough for xp media center, has lots of RAM, good processor, and you would be paying too much to buy a new system. Upgrading your gateway would be a great decision, but in my personal opinion, i would just upgrade video card, not the sound card.

[nak45z]

if i wanted to connect my reciever to the cpu, it would be a good idea to change out my sound card too right...... for optical out put...

[talldude123]

yes you would need a new sound card, but that would be costly.

you can buy some good logitech 5.1 CH speakers, they are really nice for sound, 500 watts total.