Re: Suggestions for Video Card (PCIe 1.0?)
All PCIe 2.0 cards are compatible with PCIe 1.0 slots on motherboards. The graphics card will simply default back to PCIe 1.0 mode and it will have no affect on anything since 16x PCIe-1.0 is plenty fast for today’s graphics cards.
I recommend the AMD 5570 as the best video card option, but even a 5450 or 4350 would work fine if your aren’t concerned about the best image quality possible.
You might even get by with an upgrade to the Ram and the video card only since the video cards now accelerate most video, unless you’ve got a large library of improperly coded content. The single core Athlon is still faster than an Atom, and a lot of people use an Atom with ION graphics for a HTPC.
My HTPC is a AMD 2.4ghz S754 chip with a 4350 graphics card and it works fine when I use it. Which is like once a year mostly for testing purposes. I switched to using extenders everywhere.