[mythtv-users] On-board video opinions ?

Marc Randolph mrand at pobox.com
Thu Jul 31 22:03:50 UTC 2008


On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:25 AM, Kevin Bailey
<ke-myth at retriever.dyndns.org> wrote:
> I'm putting together a new front-end and decided to go the
> dual-core in a briefcase route this time. I'd heard decent
> things about Linux support for the Intel chipsets so I
> looked at those first.
>
> It was easy enough finding a MB with a 945G chipset but
> finding a cheap CPU was harder. The cheapest Core 2 Duo
> that I could find was $120. I found this odd considering
> that you can get an Athlon 64 X2 that runs cooler (45W vs 65W)
> for half the price. Celeron DCs don't appear to have
> enough oomph and Intel doesn't appear to make anything
> in between.
> [...]

Howdy Kevin,

The Pentium Dual Cores fall between them... the E2200 and E2220 are
$80/$90.  Not sure how much oomph you are needing here.  I have the
E2200 (2.2 GHz) that handles my combined FE/BE, plus acts as my
personal machine where I keep a session of Firefox up with LOTS of
tabs running (I connect to it via VNC or NX).  Firefox is always
chewing up lots of memory, and plenty of the CPU (10 to 20%).  The FE
is doing standard def software decoding for Myth.  If I needed to do
high def, I'd obviously either need to overclock it or try out the
Intel drivers to enable hardware assist.

I haven't tried under-clocking the one I have, but I suspect that the
2.0 GHz E2180 (or even the Celeron E1400) would still handle my needs
for ~ $70.  One of the reasons that everyone loves the Intel dual
cores is because they are very easy to overclock, allowing you to pay
little ($70 to $90) for ~3 GHz.

There has been much written about the power differences between the
current gen dual core processors, and as I recall, the end result is
that it greatly depends on how it is used (or not used - for idle to
kick in).  Other than that, I'm sorry that I can't speak to the AMD
stuff... haven't investigated that in a number of years.

   Marc


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