[mythtv-users] Trouble with HD playback

[Yan-Fa Li]

Vito is correct about the multiplier issue.  Actually the newer Athlons 
are pretty much all multiplier locked in hardware now so that makes a 
Mobile Athlon even more attractive.  However I beg to disagree with Vito 
about the price performance of moving to 400FSB.  According to this 
benchmark you get less than 4% encoding improvement for 21% (196USD vs 
155USD) more money.

That much performance difference isn't worth the money.  The sweet spot 
is still at XP3000.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030623/p4_3200-10.html

Anthony Vito wrote:

> Yes, but he's didn't get the details.... the FSB is DDR, multiplied at
> the actual clock timing, not the DDR timing. So a 400 Mhz FSB Athlon
> XP 3200 ( 2.2Ghz ) has a 11x multiplier ( 200 X 11 ) therefore,
> without unlocking the chip or otherwise being able to change the
> multipler, that same chip running at 333 Mhz FSB would run at ~1833
> (166 X 11).... If you have a board that supports changing the
> multipler, and changing the core voltage, get a Mobile XP 2800 and run
> it at  11x 200, It will throw off less heat, and probably only need
> 1.55 or so volts to pull it off...... FSB absolutely makes a HUGE
> difference with Athlons. P4's REQUIRE a really fast memory subsystem
> to get even good performance, this is where the misleading information
> comes from. Athlons will benefit nearly as much percentage wise from
> increased memory performance... they just don't crap out when they
> have less then an 800Mhz bus ;)