[mythtv-users] Intel Atom backend?

Andre Newman mythtv-list at dinkum.org.uk
Wed Sep 16 09:57:39 UTC 2015


On 15 Sep 2015, at 23:35, Christopher Sean Hilton <chris at vindaloo.com> wrote:

> The hard drive in my backend is starting to die. I'm plan to replace
> with a cold spare tonight. I'd like to replace it with an SSD but the
> motherboard in my backend is so old that SSD is unsupported. Thus, I'm
> considering an Intel Atom Motherboard for use as a backend. I'm in New
> England so electricity is pretty expensive. A low power motherboard is
> almost a must. 
> 
> My tuners are: An HD-PVR with about 250 channels and a pair of Silicon
> Dust HD Homerun primes, one carries about 30 channels from my naked
> cable feed and the other carries about 5 channels from my antenna. 
> 
> My current backend runs on a positively ancient AMD CPU. It's first or
> second gen amd64. The only video processing I do is commercial
> flagging. It would be nice to do more. Specifically I'd like to
> transcode anything that comes in into a format suitable for Apple TV 2
> / iPad. I don't have to do that transcoding on the backend. I'm handy
> with ssh and shell so transcoding the output on my MacPro would be all
> that hard. That said, I'm more than willing to admit that it would be
> simpler if I could make it happen directly on the backend.
> 
> Am I going to be happy with the Atom or disappointed?

I had an Atom backend for a while, Motherboard died and I had an Atom server motherboard to hand, not a pleasant experience even with SSD and I don’t do commercial flagging or transcoding. it was a dual core 510, it’s doing mail server duties now and antispam measures bring it to it’s knees.

I’d say the slowest cheapest i3 will run huge rings around any Atom and draw less current (when idle) too. the big advance in power saving these days is referred to as “race to idle” the idea is that a fast CPU that draws little power at idle uses less power overall than an always low power CPU like the Atom because the work is done quickly and the CPU returns to low power state. The Atom is pretty hobbled tech and in real use isn’t even that low power when compared to any recent i* cpu, especially Haswell & newer.

Andre

> 
> Can I get a Core i3, i5, or i7 to do this job with really low? <= 40
> watts idle, 100 loaded?
> 
> -- 
> Chris
> 
>      __o          "All I was trying to do was get home from work."
>    _`\<,_           -Rosa Parks
> ___(*)/_(*)____.___o____..___..o...________ooO..._____________________
> Christopher Sean Hilton                    [chris/at/vindaloo/dot/com]
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list