[mythtv-users] Low power FE/BE CPU

[Patrick Doyle]

If you're starting to recognize my name and/or email address, you'll
see that I'm in the throes of analysis paralysis in building a
combined FE/BE unit to replace my Series 2 TiVo.

Today, I have decided to try to figure out what sort of CPU to put in
there, and I've decided to focus on the minimum power consumption for
the CPU.

Newegg lists two 45W AMD processors and one 35W Intel processor.

The 2 AMD processors are:

AMD Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Processor
-- unfortunately, I can't find a Socket AM3 MB with an nVidea GPU on
it, so I don't think I'm interested in this one.  Perhaps one exists,
and I just couldn't find it?

AMD Athlon 64 LE-1640 Lima 2.7GHz Socket AM2 45W Single-Core Processor


The Intel processor is:
Intel Celeron 430 Conroe-L 1.8GHz 512KB L2 Cache LGA 775 35W
Single-Core Processor

Everything I've read about MythTV has said that I shouldn't have any
problems at all running it with a modern dual core processor.  But
these are all single core processors.  Since I want to offload as much
of the HD decode to the nVidea CPU as I can, will this be an issue?
What about commflagging and other CPU intensive tasks?

Or am I focusing too much on the 35/45W processors and should I just
aim at a dual-core 65W processor and depend on a reduced clock rate to
reduce the power?

I am interested in the lower power CPUs for both energy and noise conservation

Any thoughts?

--wpd