HTPC Upgrade: Intel or AMD-Which way to go? (1 Viewer)

[BushLin]

Well, the soldered Kabini chips never came to regular Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX boards (at least for Europe). I think only ECS actually put out a product but in limited areas.

Now we have a date of March 2014 for the socketed version of Kabini and MSI look like they'll have a board for the new socket FS1b.

http://techreport.com/news/25891/mini-itx-msi-board-teases-socketed-kabini-apus
http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-3...will-be-based-on-core-Kabini-Socket-FS1b.html

I reckon that people have different definitions of 'smooth' , i reckon the e-350 is too underpowered to recommend for MP, the A4-5000 is probably close to the bottom end, if not at the bottom end of the 'fast enough' list to be recommended.

With plenty of Windows 7 guff disabled I have MP 1.2.3 running pretty well on an old single core Pentium M 2Ghz, is smooth enough for me but still wanting Kabini for a real low power SoC rather than relying on add-on sound and graphics which takes power compution up higher than I'd like (@80w 1080p playback).

 

[BushLin]

... before the Kabini boards arrive, MSI are saying they'll have a Mini-ITX board available with a 10w Intel Bay Trail CPU (Celeron J1800). I'd expect this to be the real competitor to Kabini, with a weaker GPU and stronger CPU, should be more than enough GPU for offloading 1080p though.

Details
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/msi-bay-trail-d-mini-itx,25802.html

Even lower power Bay Trail tablet compared to Kabini:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-intel-atom-z3770-tested/2

Desktop Bay Trail benchmarks / power consumption - although compared to a 65w Richland A4-4000 (why!!!)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bay-trail-celeron-j1750-performance,3614-4.html