[mythtv-users] Low power AMD processors

[Brian Wood]

On Monday 17 August 2009 16:15:44 jedi wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 05:09:13PM -0500, David Schlenk wrote:
> > With the fall season approaching I'm contemplating an upgrade for my
> > only non-HD capable FE. I've been doing my research and came upon
> > these newish AMD chips, Athlon II X2, specifically the 250 chip
> > (technical details available here:
> > http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/processors/athlon-ii-x2/Pages/AMD-
> >athlon-ii-x2-processor-model-numbers-feature-comparison.aspx). They're
> > dual core and are 65W TDP and unlike say the Phenom II X2 550 its
> > actually dual core not a "quad core but oops those other two might not
> > work" which makes it more power efficient at the cost of L3 cache and
> > also it is $25 cheaper.
> >
> > Anyway, has anyone tried one of these with MythTV? Specifically
> > wondering how well they can play back 720p/1080i MPEG2 and whatever
> > format the HDPVR uses. I'm interested in playback performance without
> > hardware acceleration ala XvMC or VDPAU, not that I won't use one or
>
>     Get the fastest cores you can find/afford. The speed of the individual
> cores is more important than how many of them are on the die.
>
>     Something like a 2.8ghz C2D/C2Q would work well enough.


Generally that's good advice, since the OP was asking about CPU decoding.

But with VDPAU, the trend seems to be towards lower power (and thus lower 
capability) CPUs, depending on the video hardware to do the decoding.

Then there is Jarod's "Mystery Method", alluded to the other day. Not sure 
what that might require, enough audio buffers to decode the video? :-)

-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org