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

radical

Portal Pro
December 16, 2010
1,466
191
Home Country
Germany Germany
There are other AMD + Intel CPUs suitable for HTPC that are coming out before then. Like over the next 3/12 or so.

Do you mean AMD Kabini/Temash and Intels Haswell i3 ?

In my opinion the Kabini Platform seems to be very interesting.
An 4 Core with up to 2,0 Ghz CPU-part combinined with an known reliable graphics unit and a TDP of 25W is made for Multimedia using.
The big questions are, when will ASUS, Gigabyte etc. will show any consumer mainboards, what features will they have and what will they cost.


Beside of the flawless playback of 24p and C7 state, I don't see any advantage over Sandy and Ivy.
 

kiwijunglist

Super Moderator
  • Team MediaPortal
  • June 10, 2008
    6,746
    1,751
    New Zealand
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    Yes AMD Kabini

    Slide23_575px.jpg


    AMD A4-5000 & A6-5200 looks really nice for powerful SFF HTPC

    The 35W intels look good for HTPCs too.

    Haswell_CPU_Lineup.jpg
     
    Last edited:

    kiwijunglist

    Super Moderator
  • Team MediaPortal
  • June 10, 2008
    6,746
    1,751
    New Zealand
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    Yeah probably was that one. Have to Take the TDP with a grain of salt, because most of the time the chip will be idling and a 65W chip might idle at almost the same wattage. Also faster CPUs take less time to reach their idle state :)

    The AMD is the exciting chip, because their old low wattage SFF CPUs eg. E350/E450 were too slow to make a good HTPC, but these look like they will make amazing SFF HTPCs.
     

    Owlsroost

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • October 28, 2008
    5,540
    5,038
    Cambridge
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    The AMD is the exciting chip, because their old low wattage SFF CPUs eg. E350/E450 were too slow to make a good HTPC, but these look like they will make amazing SFF HTPCs.

    It's going to depend on how good the GPU's are - note they only have 128 Radeon cores (less than a HD6450, and running at a slower clock rate, but with a wider memory interface so it's probably a close run thing).
     

    BushLin

    Portal Member
    December 1, 2012
    19
    0
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    In my opinion the Kabini Platform seems to be very interesting.
    An 4 Core with up to 2,0 Ghz CPU-part combinined with an known reliable graphics unit and a TDP of 25W is made for Multimedia using.
    The big questions are, when will ASUS, Gigabyte etc. will show any consumer mainboards, what features will they have and what will they cost.

    I'm wondering if Kabini desktop boards will ever arrive, they were shown at Computex in June with availability cited as being 6-8 weeks away, yet here we are 4 months later and there's nothing in stores.

    In the mean time Intel released the Celeron 847 platform which is a very close match for the mythical Kabini, power consumption wise but has weaker video and memory, it probably sits in between an A4-5000 and the old E-350 from roughly transposing the benchmarks I've seen. I know we're about to get a new round of low power chips from Intel so this is a stop gap and I'd only consider it if my system wasn't working...

    ...for now I continue to wait for Kabini to appear but maybe AMD killed it on the desktop and we wait for Kaveri instead?
     

    BushLin

    Portal Member
    December 1, 2012
    19
    0
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    Hard to say, people got the E-350 running smoothly and the 847 looks like it has better video performance even if it's not as good as a Kabini might be.

    There's only a couple of reviews and this one isn't comprehensive, like I say, I wouldn't consider it unless I had to buy a low power system today without waiting for the upcoming wares.

    http://www.hartware.de/review_1587_9.html
     

    kiwijunglist

    Super Moderator
  • Team MediaPortal
  • June 10, 2008
    6,746
    1,751
    New Zealand
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    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.
     

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom