Ongoing Need 1080- h.264 capable intel cpu advice (1 Viewer)

[flagtuck]

I'm in the US building a HTPC that I plan to run MediaPortal and TVEngine on the same box under XP SP2. I'd like to be able to play 1080 h.264 content without maxing out the CPU.

I'm most confused about which CPU to buy. I'm game for overclocking if I can do it without adding a ton of extra fans. I'm looking at the following (but am open to other Intel suggestions):

Core 2 Duo e4500 2.2 ghz w/2mb cache 800mhz for $121.50
is it worth it or necessary to jump up to either of these higher priced chips?

Core 2 Duo e4600 2.4 ghz w/2mb cache 800mhz for $141.75
Core 2 Duo e6550 2.33 ghz w/4mb cache 1333mhz for $166.50
from http://www.mwave.com
or newegg.

most relevant pieces I have already:
Radeon X1650 GPU 512 MB (128 bit) DDR2 PCIe Graphics Card
OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800 CL 5-5-5-12 Dual Channel Kit
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 Combo ATSC/NTSC, PCI - on board mpeg2 encode

I'm looking at this mobo:
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L
Newegg is out of stock. I found it for 89.00 here:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusea...ia=BA24085

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[allanp81]

I have a couple of mp boxes with a 1.86ghz core2duo chip in them and an x1300 graphics card. These play back 1080p h.264 no problem with maybe 40% cpu usage.

 

[flagtuck]

Thanks a bunch for the info. I guess I'll go with the Core 2 Duo e4500 2.2 ghz and save a few bucks.
I'm a Mac user specifically building this PC for Media Portal and am really excited to get it going.

 

[diehard2]

As an FYI, the quad cores are beasts and not too much more expensive considering you quadruple your computing power. I write scientific code, and have implemented multiple core algorithms and can see a 3.5x speedup over 1 core. Even experienced programmers are still figuring out how to use all of the horsepower they're finally getting. As the programmers get better, so will the multicore apps.

 

[Mr Hipp]

You, don't need much of a CPU if you offload the decoding to the GPU. I have a AMD 3500+ and CPU load is about 7%. I would go for a passive ATI 2600. They are quite cheep.

 

[flagtuck]

You, don't need much of a CPU if you offload the decoding to the GPU. I have a AMD 3500+ and CPU load is about 7%. I would go for a passive ATI 2600. They are quite cheep.

Do you think the Radeon X1650 will cut it with the right drivers?

 

[coopers]

Keep in mind though, if you're going to do any video postprocessing, then all of that is also done on the CPU, so you may want something with a lot of grunt.

Course, the h.264 stuff shouldn't really need it if it's 1080p.

 

[Ramshackles]

I'd pick the HD 2600 aswell, it has some hardware support for playback of h264 etc.

 

[Tech Geek]

My X1300 was fine for playing most 1080 video but chocked on scaling a 480 sized image.
I have an X1650 which should be pretty close to playing everything with a sufficient CPU but as others have mentioned, it has no h264 support. I'm going to be reloading software on my system this weekend to take another stab at HDTV. If the X1650 doesn't work I'll have to try my X1950GT instead. If it comes to that I'll probably just buy a 2600 card and get it over with.

 

[seal]

For good H.264 playback you dont need verry fast processor. Modern graphics cards can decode H.264 on thein processors in ati thich technology is called AVIVO - http://ati.amd.com/technology/avivo/ and there is list of supported products: http://ati.amd.com/technology/avivo/products.html and Nvidia have PureVideo HD technology: http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_hd.html