[mythtv-users] silent and low-power: AMD or Intel?

[Ian Clark]

2009/5/27 John Drescher <drescherjm at gmail.com>

> > And of course I forgot to mention that this is for a combined BE/FE. (me
> idiot)
>
> HD now or later?
>
> If later I would get the same system and pair it with a nvidia VDPAU
> compatible card of 8400 or better.


If you don't mind a seperate GPU then an AMD-780 based chipset would give
integrated HDMI based video (but you have to use the ATI drivers which
currently have tearing issues still I think.) but you could add a PCI-E gfx
card. The chipset is nice and low power though.



>
>
> > Anyway, so there is no noticeable difference between cool-and-quiet
> > (AMD) and what ever the marketing term for energy efficiency is with
> > Intel?
> >
> Idle differences at the lowest frequency and voltage are not that much
> at 45nm. At the highest frequency Intel still has an edge. I mean the
> 65W 2.83 GHz Q9550s 45nm Quad core is hard to beat for efficiency but
> that is probably way more CPU than you need.
>

True, although remember it's not just about the CPU, the supporting chipsets
make a difference too. Also IIRC intel and AMD quote different figures for
power consumption, so the numbers aren't as directly comparable as they may
first appear.. (I think AMD quotes absolume maximum, whereas intel quotes a
more real world use figure. This may have changed now though?)

FWIW, I've got AMD CPU and nVidia GFX in my lowely FE/BE and that's fine.
(One day, I'll try the ATI driver again so I can go back to the silent ATI
card I've got.) I don't have HD though.

Cheers,

Ian
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