Amex blue-ray HTPC - me want one =)

[ziphnor]

Originally Posted by knutinh

I respect your opinion. I also said that energy consumption and noise are linked, but there is no 1:1 relation. ... Everything has its pros and cons. As my country needs electric heating most of the year, energy consumption in it self is not an issue (a 300W computer means that I can turn down the heat by 300 Watts).

300W of electricty costs a hell of a lot more than 300W of heat from the heating system!

Can we agree that given the choice between two CPUs with the same price and performance with same mobo features available etc its stupid not to choose the one with the lowest TDP?

It also looks like this case has external ribs, so you are wrong in saying that "used wattage ends up as heat in the case no matter how you look at it". If a good, noise-less/low-noise solution exists to transport heat out of the cage, such as heatpipes or large ribs/slow large fans, then no problem by me.

Okay sure, of course you can also just water cool the entire thing and place a radiator on the balcony(i actually do that with my main PC , but why get into something like that when power efficient CPU's are available??

Everyone is doing their best to make legal simple use of media as hard as possible. My point is that there is a milion nerds out there, dying to get credits for "hacking" Blueray. No copyright/usage-prevention system can withstand that :-)

Im sure you are right, im also expecting these DRM measures to be broken soon. The problem is that these content providers keep adding more and more layers of DRM, and we *KEEP* buying it. Sure, we might break the DRM afterwards, but that doesnt change the fact that we still buy it(unless you boycott them and go for illegal downloads in which case they will claim they need more DRM to stop piracy) so why should they stop doing it? In some cases boycotts/complaints do help. For example Ubisoft has recently dropped the use of Starforce DRM in favor of Securom(still nasty but at least only runs with the program its protecting) because of user complaints and a tendency to boycott games using starforce. It just seems to me that the content providers are still 'winning' no matter how many time their DRM is broken.

Personally i prefer watermarking, if some protection has to be used.

[mzemina]

Originally Posted by ziphnor

...I would never use an Intel Pentium D in a HTPC. A Core Duo or an E3/E6 A64 Venice is better suited...

ziphnor - Not to be a nit, but do you have any technical (with supporting evidence - links would be nice to read through) why you believe this way?

Mike

[ziphnor]

Originally Posted by mzemina

ziphnor - Not to be a nit, but do you have any technical (with supporting evidence - links would be nice to read through) why you believe this way?

You mean, apart from the fact that the Pentium D uses almost 4 times(!) as much power at full load ? If that doesnt do it for you, i guess we have very divergent views of the design of a HTPC! (see the previous link to silentpcreview for the numbers). I would say that the important issues for a HTPC is power consumption and noise, both of these are affected by a power hungry CPU such as the pentium D. If you remove those 2 from consideration there are hardly any difference in choosing a normal PC CPU and a CPU for a HTPC system maybe apart from which are best at media de/encoding(but why would a HTPC CPU be working on that, the graphics card in a HTPC should off load it for decoding and the tuner card should handle most of the encoding except archiving to Xvid etc).

Maybe you havent noticed, but even Intel themselves are abandoning the Pentium D type architecture in favor of the Conroe which is in fact based on the Pentium M/Core Solo/Duo architecture.

If you dont like the Core Duo, i think its worthwhile to notice that the AMD A64 (X2) series of CPU's have no problems keeping up performance wise with the Pentium D's while using much less power(and not surprisingly running much cooler).

Hell on the single core side an A64 E6's 3000/3200 is almost guaranteed to undervolt to to 1.1V ( stock -0.3V). At this voltage the CPU heats up so little that its a breeze to cool passively.

[knutinh]

Originally Posted by ziphnor

300W of electricty costs a hell of a lot more than 300W of heat from the heating system!

Can we agree that given the choice between two CPUs with the same price and performance with same mobo features available etc its stupid not to choose the one with the lowest TDP?

Where I live, 300W of electricity costs the same no matter if I use it for heating or computing. Is your place any different?

Your comparision of CPUs would be great in an ideal world. However, FFD-show gurus keep stating that that particular software works better with intel processors (no, I dont want to start a war on that. Search this forum if you disagree). And processors like intel mobile ones have only recently gotten ok mobo offerings.

I am using an AMD 3000+ for my office computer because of its energy use, and it too has its negative sides.

Okay sure, of course you can also just water cool the entire thing and place a radiator on the balcony(i actually do that with my main PC , but why get into something like that when power efficient CPU's are available??

Heatpipes does it. In my case, why should I throw away my existing p4/northwood hardware when I had the know-how to build a HTPC that cant be heard in listening position? It is important not to get relifgious on these thing...

-k

[mzemina]

Originally Posted by ziphnor

You mean, apart from the fact that the Pentium D uses almost 4 times(!) as much power at full load ? If that doesnt do it for you, i guess we have very divergent views of the design of a HTPC! (see the previous link to silentpcreview for the numbers). I would say that the important issues for a HTPC is power consumption and noise, both of these are affected by a power hungry CPU such as the pentium D. If you remove those 2 from consideration there are hardly any difference in choosing a normal PC CPU and a CPU for a HTPC system maybe apart from which are best at media de/encoding(but why would a HTPC CPU be working on that, the graphics card in a HTPC should off load it for decoding and the tuner card should handle most of the encoding except archiving to Xvid etc).

Maybe you havent noticed, but even Intel themselves are abandoning the Pentium D type architecture in favor of the Conroe which is in fact based on the Pentium M/Core Solo/Duo architecture.

If you dont like the Core Duo, i think its worthwhile to notice that the AMD A64 (X2) series of CPU's have no problems keeping up performance wise with the Pentium D's while using much less power(and not surprisingly running much cooler).

Hell on the single core side an A64 E6's 3000/3200 is almost guaranteed to undervolt to to 1.1V ( stock -0.3V). At this voltage the CPU heats up so little that its a breeze to cool passively.

What I was looking for was along the lines of performance of encoding/decoding and with DirectX - what to expect of each type of processor - real world specs. Yes - power and heat are an issue for a HTPC but I was wanting to know what the performance specs were for those processors in HTPC type operations.

Mike

[knutinh]

Originally Posted by mzemina

What I was looking for was along the lines of performance of encoding/decoding and with DirectX - what to expect of each type of processor - real world specs. Yes - power and heat are an issue for a HTPC but I was wanting to know what the performance specs were for those processors in HTPC type operations.

Mike

Did you try this chart:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

-k

[ziphnor]

Okay, as i mentioned above, unless there are hugh differences in VMW/Xvid encoding speeds i wouldnt pay too much attention to that, but you can see a comparison here:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q2...o/index.x?pg=9

Core Duo is a really good CPU, judging from those numbers. The X2 3800+ can also be run very cool, at silentpcreview people have reported that the actual TDP is much lower than the official number, and in 2 days AMD is launching a 35W(!) X2 3800+ for AM2

[Spragleknas]

A little "on the side info":

AMDs new platform, AM2, will be a "one for all socket" (not like 754-> sempron, 939 -> A64). This means you'll be able to buy a nForce 430/6150 mobo and a sempron 3000+, running at 1.6 GHz and only using 35W (theoretical) - and of course; using Cool and Quiet.

[ziphnor]

Originally Posted by Okay

running at 1.6 GHz and only using 35W (theoretical) - and of course; using Cool and Quiet.

I think a sempron will go lower than that in power usage. My A64 rates itself at 38.2W TDP at stock voltage(1.4V), running it at 1.1V cuts ~15W of the load wattage (measures at the wall socket), so the CPU itself is most likely using at least 10W less than at stock, easily bringing it far below 35W. My guess is that a Sempron can easily do that, and perhaps even undervolt further.

Btw, using Cool&Quiet to lower CPU speed doesnt really make that much of a difference, i run at 1.8Ghz@1.1V all the time, and at idle i use less than +1W(measures at wall socket) compared to 1.0Ghz@1.1V(that is CnQ).

[Spragleknas]

Well, my CPU temp. is higher when CnQ is disabled (according to Speedfan).
Vcore goes from 1.1 and up to 1.4 when CnQ is enabled.