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[rpalmer68]

Hmm, so I'm about to bui,d a new HTPC.

I plan to use it as my main front end (in theatr View) to all my media, with video, music, DVD, BluRay, HD TV playback and with a total of 5 playback zones for music.

I will use anoher PC for all my ripping and tagging etc, the HTPC will be a playback machine.

So would you suggest a Core 2 Duo 3.2 Ghz E8500 (AU$240) processor or a Quad Core 2.83 Ghz Q9950 (AU$460) given how it will be used and that the quad is twice the price of the Duo ?

(My budget won't stretch to a Quad processor any faster than the Q9550)

Cheers
Richard

[jmone]

Ralph - I use the Q6600 which can be had for under A$200 on my G33 system so it has to handle all my progs + does all my HW accel including Blu-ray etc & it does it easy....

[glynor]

The Q6600 was a great CPU, but has gotten a bit long in the tooth.  You'll definitely want to go with one of the new 45nm CPUs with the larger cache and higher FSB (Wolfdale or Yorkfield).  Intel also revised the CPUs with the 45nm transition and the clock-per-clock performance is better on the 45nm CPUs by 15%-30% compared to the older 65nm chips, plus the 45nm chips have SSE4 and a few other small architectural improvements.

I actually would NOT recommend either of the two options you listed.  They're certainly okay, but I'd go with the Yorkfield Q9300 (Quad, 2.5GHz, 45nm, 6MB L2, 1333 FSB) and overclock the crap out of it.  Just make sure to buy fairly good quality memory (Corsair, Mushkin, G-Skill, or OCZ) and a not-crappy motherboard you should be able to VERY, VERY easily overclock it to 3.2GHz.  It won't QUITE match the Q9550 because of it has half the L2 cache, but the real-world impact of that is extremely limited.  The quads are only very rarely cache-limited with 6MB (usually only in high-end relational database applications and a couple games).  Even still, you're looking at something on the order of a 2-3% performance difference due to cache AT WORST when clocked to the same speed.  Overclocking the 45nm Core chips literally couldn't be easier.  Turn the FSB speed up, set the memory divider lower (to keep the memory in-spec), test, and you're done.

In the old days you used to have to dump extra voltage into CPUs to overclock them and all sorts of other esoteric tricks.  These 45nm Intel beasts though don't need anything special at all.  Almost every single chip that comes out of their fab is capable of ~3.2-3.5GHz.  Many are capable of 4GHz with only air cooling and on stock voltage.  These things WANT to be overclocked.  Intel is artificially holding them back for marketing purposes.  For all intents an purposes, the Q9300 IS a Q9550, with some traces on the chip cut to disable half the cache and the multiplier set lower.

I don't know the difference in price in Australian money, but it is a $65 difference here in the US.  That $65 would be MUCH better spent on a better GPU, particularly for HTPC use.  The CPU is really not very important anymore for most use-cases, and even more so for media and home-theater uses (and gaming too).  I'd go for a slightly slower, cheaper quad and then bump the speed myself.  Best of both worlds.  If you really want to save money, the other one I'd look at would be the E8400 (rather than the E8500).  A little cheaper, and again, you can just bump the clockspeed up to match (and there will literally be no difference between them then).  Still, though, I'd go with the 4 cores in this case.  You can overclock a bit to make up for a lower stock speed, and cache is of limited benefit when you get above 6MB right now, but you can't add in extra cores.  And MC will use them if you've got them.

I'm not sure what you were doing as far as a GPU, but I'd strongly consider the AMD HD4850.  You can pick up a 512MB Sapphire 4850 for $169 (US) right now, and even get it for $149 if you bother with the mail-in-rebate.  The performance difference you'd see from something like that compared to a bargain-basement video card (or worse, Intel integrated graphics) would be huge.  The newer cards offload all the HD playback processing from the CPU, will accelerate things like Theater View much more smoothly and reliably, and handle Aero in Vista much better (if you go that route).  If you have a bit more money to spend and you will actually use it for gaming, then I'd look at the HD4870 (but only if you really will use it for gaming, otherwise just save the cash and go with the HD4850).  The AMD HD48xx series cards have gotten rave reviews, and are currently blowing everything Nvidia has away on the price-performance scale.  Plus, the video acceleration stuff works better (and I think quality is a bit better) on the AMD cards.

[ThoBar]

any idea what the fan noise on the 48xx series is like? Does it all but shutdown for general htpc type use? I've been considering one for a while, but dont know anyone who has one to ask about it.

[glynor]

The stock cooler is okay, but is not silent even at idle.  Certainly not loud (AMD went to great lengths to keep the noise down on these cards because they got "dinged" on that in most reviews of their previous generation of cards), but not absolutely dead-silent either.  When you first boot up, the fans run at full tilt and it is quite loud, but as soon as the BIOS finishes loading the fan speed drops way back down to lower-than-normal noise levels for a desktop GPU.  However, a bunch of the manufacturers are using their own aftermarket coolers on them now and many of these are all-but-silent at idle (which pretty much includes anything except running 3D games).  Generally, using the video hardware acceleration won't cause the fans to kick up.  That is a fairly small, special-purpose, part of the chip and it doesn't need much juice to do it's magic.  During real-world usage, even when you are running the card full-tilt in a 3D game, the fans never crank up to more than 60% speed or so.

The one I like the best right now is the Sapphire card with the after-market cooler.  They make good quality, cheap cards anyway (I have 4 Sapphire video cards, and two of their TV tuner cards).  This one is fantastic, and is actually cheaper by $10 than the one with the stock cooler: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102770

Another good option might be the MSI with the aftermarket cooler.  That thing looks beefier and has a fancier cooler.  It is more expensive though, and I bet most of that extra cooler metal is for show and in the real-world it'd be almost identical to the much cheaper Sapphire.

[glynor]

I didn't realize it earlier, but the cooler on that Sapphire card is made by Zalman, and they don't mess around.  Their coolers are designed to keep the temperatures low and with an extreme emphasis on absolute silence.  Here's a review of a the Sapphire TOXIC version (which is absolutely, physically identical to the one I linked to above at newegg, except that the one I linked to isn't overclocked and it is cheaper): http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/toxic_hd4850/

From the review:

The biggest complaint about the HD48xx series of video cards has been the performance of the cooling system on the cards - more so the HD4850 variant than the HD4870. Load temps in the 90+ Celsius range are a little unnerving for those that pay attention to the small things. While ATI has said that the temperatures are ok, something had to be done. The Zalman GPU cooler used on the Toxic HD4850 cooled the card quite well. Idle temperatures of 35 to 38 degrees Celsius, and load temperatures of 60 to 64 Celsius - with zero noise - are a huge improvement over the standard cooling used on the 4850 series cards - no BIOS or software modifications needed. Those solutions worked for the reference cooling, but they came with a penalty - extra work and noise.

I, personally, think that all the complaints about the heat levels on the stock 4850's is because people don't know what the heck they're talking about.  People see the temperatures that would be borderline-dangerous on an Nvidia card, and think that it "can't be good" on this one.  However, chips can have very different designs and different substrates and different heat tolerances.  It isn't like chips can't survive temps much higher than this (almost every Pentium 4 ran hotter at idle).  AMD says they qualified the chips at constant temps of up to 110C, and all of them (even with the stock coolers) run a LOT cooler than that.

Either way, with the Sapphire with the Zalman cooler, you don't have to worry about that at all.  It is silent and cool.

[AustinBike]

I have an HTPC built up from a gigabyte GA MA78GM-S2H board with the AMD 780 chipset.  That essentialy has a Radeon 3200 video controller built in.

The system stays quiet and very cool, low fan noise so I can watch movies in peace. 

For me, it was all about having a small chassis, low power and low noise.  I can decode HD video and display it on my 47" 1080p flat panel with the CPU hardly breaking 20% utilization.

The whole system is probably drawing 40-45w total.  I don't have a watt meter on it like I do my 690 system downstairs, but it should be in that range.  With all of the peripherals (including video and gigabit) built into the board, and a notebook hard drive, I get great power savings.

All of my media is on a NAS so having a small drive makes no difference.

[glynor]

I have an HTPC built up from a gigabyte GA MA78GM-S2H board with the AMD 780 chipset.  That essentialy has a Radeon 3200 video controller built in.

I have that exact board on my secondary, office machine.  I LOVE it.  Would be a great little HTPC board too, but the CPUs they support are a bit on the lackluster side.

Are you running it with a Phenom or an older Athlon64?  I've got a cheap dual-core Athlon64 in mine, but with the way the bottom has fallen out on the Phenom's price lately, I'm considering bumping it up to a Phenom (especially now that they aren't broken anymore).  I'm really hoping that when the 45nm Phenoms come out later this year they'll have some more performance headroom.  If I could get a Phenom at 3.0GHz, I'd snap it up in a second.

I would say though, that board does have some USB and SATA performance issues.  Some recent BIOS updates made it a bit better, but I think some of the problems are just in the southbridge silicon.  I've also had quite a few network-bus related BSODs on that box, that I don't see on any of my other ones.  Now, I'll admit, it is running uTorrent and an FTP server nearly constantly, so the BSODs could be software-bug-related rather than driver issues, but still it is annoying.

[rpalmer68]

WOW thanks Glynor... think I've found a passion of yours 

I was looking at the Gigibyte GA-EP45-DS3P motherboard http://www.giga-byte.com.au/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2834 but to be honest all the board choice out there now leaves me a little confused at to which is best to get.  So I'm open to suggestions on an alternative (and cheaper) board option, although if I can I'd prefer to stick with Gigabyte boards since they have served me well in the past.

In terms of GPU this was still up in the air, I have a Nvidia 8500GT card, but wanted to upgrade to something that would deal better with HD playback, also the Purevideo decoder seems rather unstable with MC.  So I was thinking about changing to an ATI card this time around, I'll investigate the HD4850

I'll look into the CPU options here since you think overclocking  is so easy and will give such improved performance.

Many thanks
Richard

[AustinBike]

Are you running it with a Phenom or an older Athlon64? 

I am running it with an Athlon 5000+ that is undervolted to 1.1v so that I can run as cool as possible.

I have a bunch of Opteron 1354's and 1356's sitting around.  They work fine in the gigabyte GA MA69GM-S2H so I would bet they work in the 780 board as well.  That board supports phenom quads as well, I just don't think I have any here at home to test.

[JimH]

I guess you don't work for Intel, do you?   

[jmone]

For HTPC playback use I'd NOT want to OC the CPU - you just need enough horse power (+ overhead) for stable quality playback --> less power --> less heat --> quiet.  I think glynor is correct that the newer Quad cores that pull less power are the go.  If you want to encode/transcode media etc then by all means OC it to the max....

[glynor]

WOW thanks Glynor... think I've found a passion of yours 

I was looking at the Gigibyte GA-EP45-DS3P motherboard http://www.giga-byte.com.au/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2834 but to be honest all the board choice out there now leaves me a little confused at to which is best to get.  So I'm open to suggestions on an alternative (and cheaper) board option, although if I can I'd prefer to stick with Gigabyte boards since they have served me well in the past.

Heh.  Yeah.  I like to build PCs.   

I've always had great luck with Gigabyte boards as well.  If I was buying a board for a new system, that Gigabyte board would almost certainly be it.  I'd recommend you take a look at the Tech Report's current System Building Guide, particularly the "Grand Experiment" tier.  They do a great job, and they actually did recommend that exact board.  It would be a great pick.  If you want to save a little money, a good alternative would be the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L.  It is a bit lower-end, but you could evaluate if you'd ever really need to use those extra features, and maybe save the $35 (US).

For HTPC playback use I'd NOT want to OC the CPU - you just need enough horse power (+ overhead) for stable quality playback --> less power --> less heat --> quiet.  I think glynor is correct that the newer Quad cores that pull less power are the go.  If you want to encode/transcode media etc then by all means OC it to the max....

In the "old days" (two years ago) I'd have agreed with you.  However, these current Intel CPUs can be overclocked easily on stock voltage.  They are rock-solid stable and don't consume a single watt extra power (or generate a single BTU more of heat) when overclocked than when running at stock.  As I said above... These current gen Intel processors are essentially ALL capable of hitting 3.2GHz on air at stock voltage.  You might have a handful that won't be rock-solid at those speeds in a batch of a hundred.

We're not talking extra power or heat.  We're just talking eliminating wasted power draw and "freeing" the CPU to do what it wants to do naturally.  The Core 2 Duo in my current HTPC was sold as a 2.2GHz CPU, but I have it running at 3.0GHz right now in my HTPC and it has the same exact voltage as stock and my Zalman heat sink has the fan speed turned all the way down as far as it goes (which is MUCH quieter than the stock fan).  Literally all it took was turning up the FSB speed and setting the memory divider to keep the RAM within reason.  You pump up the voltage and use more esoteric cooling and many of these chips can hit 4.0GHz on air (though I wouldn't do THAT on a HTPC)!

Now, of course, if you are trying to build a SFF box and keep it completely fanless and you want to undervolt a CPU then you wouldn't want to go that way.  But if you're doing that, then I'd go with a low-end Athlon64 anyhow (which, despite the hype, can provide substantially better performance than a fancy new Intel Atom with the exact same power and thermal envelope).

[hit_ny]

This...

I have an HTPC built up from a gigabyte GA MA78GM-S2H board with the AMD 780 chipset. 

I can decode HD video and display it on my 47" 1080p flat panel with the CPU hardly breaking 20% utilization.

for only

The whole system is probably drawing 40-45w total.

is unbelievable !!

Laptop consumption on a desktop  ?

[AustinBike]

I guess you don't work for Intel, do you?   

We have a winner.

[AustinBike]

This...

for only

is unbelievable !!

Laptop consumption on a desktop  ?

Yes, I'm a big fan of SPCR.com when it comes to making low power, quiet PCs with enough performance to be reasonable.

Here are some tips:

1. 120mm case fans - they push more air at lower speed, so you don't have to spin them as fast to keep the PC cool. This also makes them quieter.
2. 120mm heatsink fans - most heat sinks have 80mm or 92mm fans on them. You can get a 120m to 92mm attachment that will allow you to use a 120mm fan to cool your CPU.  This drops the fan speed, power and noise.
3. SpeedFan - its freeware that allows you to better manage fan speeds
4. Fan mate - a hardware based fan speed tool, costs $5-10 and helps over-ride when the system cannot reduce the speed
5. Notebook drives - fast sata notebook drives; they draw ~1w in idle, 2w in use, compared to desktop drives that can be 8w in idle and 10-12w in use.
6. Underclock your memory - I have 667 memory, clocked to 533 to reduce power
7. Undervolt the processor - a 1.2v processor runs fine at 1.1v and draws less power
8. Cool n quiet - the AMD tool will drop the proc to 1GHz in idle
9. Seal the case - close up all the holes you don't need to increase airflow.  My antec case has side holes that spell out "antec" and essentially let air out the sides. These are covered as you want full front to back cooling.
10. Raise the PC - On most bezels the bottom front is where the air comes in.  Putting the PC in the stand or on blocks increases airflow.
11. Open the air vents - use a dremel tool or some tin snips to open the front vents a little more, letting more cool air in
12. Clean out the dust - regularly open the box to clean out the dust
13. Thin cables - SATA helps a lot, but for CDs and floppies, go to thin round cables, the flat ones block airflow
14. Integrated peripherals - get a MB with everything integrated.  Video cards, sound cards and all that other stuff shouldn't be sitting in slots, it should be on the board.  Each card is ~5-10W
15. Disable features - not using firewire, serial and parallel?  Shut them off in the BIOS. 

Yeah, that's a start.  Do that and get yourself some watts back, saving you money, reducing the heat and noise.

[glynor]

I was just listening to the current Tech Report podcast, and something related and very interesting came up.  TR is working on a review currently of AMD's brand-new lower-midrange cards, the HD 4670 and HD 4650 ($79 and 69 US respectively).  Historically, cards down in this price range are typically not worth the money, because you'd be better served by saving your pennies and going with a true midrange ~$150 card (or just sticking with something VERY low-end or onboard graphics).  However, from what they teased in the podcast, it looks like AMD has taken that mold and, not just shattered, but packed it up and blasted it into space.

Here's a teaser on their web site: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15485

The full review is coming soon, and I'm very interested to read it.  However, it looks like the $79 HD4670 is going to provide 3D performance of near the level of last-generation's HD3870 (that's what I have in my HTPC right now).    I'll quote from the podcast: 

But I can tell you already that some of these cheaper cards now will run some of the newer games... I've been testing Call of Duty 4 and I did test Crysis and some of these things... and you can get at reasonable detail levels and reasonable resolutions, good enough performance to play these games.

So, it remains to be seen with the full review what resolutions he is talking about.  However, if you aren't a big gamer but might want to play a game on your HTPC occasionally, perhaps the HD 4670 would be a perfect way to go!  I'd look for one with 512MB of GDDR3 RAM onboard, but if it really does even get close to the performance of a HD 3870, with full HD offload capabilities, then I think you might be very, very happy with it for $79.

[rpalmer68]

Thanks folks,

I've ordered my system;
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3P
CPU: Q9400 (can't get the Q9300 here now)
GPU: Sapphire HD4850 512MB Dual Slot cooler

So the only final decision is XP or Vista I guess.

All my other machines are XP and I'm leaning towards XP on the new one, unless there's a good reason to move to Vista??

Cheers
Richard

[tcman41]

Thanks folks,

I've ordered my system;
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3P
CPU: Q9400 (can't get the Q9300 here now)
GPU: Sapphire HD4850 512MB Dual Slot cooler

So the only final decision is XP or Vista I guess.

All my other machines are XP and I'm leaning towards XP on the new one, unless there's a good reason to move to Vista??

Cheers
Richard

All components seem like good mid range values, it should do you well. I tired a number of times to like Vista and just couldn't do it, went back every time to xp. Vista just doesn't offer that much new and the additional headaches over xp in my opinion aren't worth it but it's just my opinion.

a good source for computer component prices can be found here = http://www.pricewatch.com/

TC 

[p7389]

Ah Windows Vista, source of perennial controversy and mudslinging. Windows Vista today is stable, and I see absolutely no reason to get XP over it on a new PC. You should consider the x64 version unless you use programs that have compatibility problems - but really, most do work these days. But this is just my opinion, to contrast with that of tcman.

[AustinBike]

I have Vista on 4 systems at home and don't find any driver issues.  My work XP notebook crashes more than all 4 of my vista systems combined.

Your actual mileage may vary.

[glynor]

That system is going to rock hard.  Good stuff there.  How much RAM did you get?

If you are buying a new copy of an OS, I would actually recommend Vista 64 as well.  There is absolutely no reason to go with Vista 32 (and in that case, I'd just stick with XP).  However, true 64bit support is worth it and some of the security features in Vista are really better than XP (especially with the signed drivers required by the 64-bit version).  Vista isn't completely fixed by any stretch of the imagination, but with SP1 they've fixed many of the major issues and it is stable and compatible enough for day-to-day use now.  That question is also related to the RAM question... If you got more than 3GB, I'd say that Vista 64 is certainly the way to go.

The major things holding me back from going Vista on my systems are:

1) I already have access to a site license for XP through work, so it is free and more importantly doesn't require activation nightmares.
2) The absurdly slow file copy bug in Vista (which, despite some initial reports is still not completely quashed in SP1).

However, if I was actually buying an OS, at this point (and this is a recent change on my part) it'd be Vista 64.

[rpalmer68]

That system is going to rock hard.  Good stuff there.  How much RAM did you get?

If you are buying a new copy of an OS, I would actually recommend Vista 64 as well.  There is absolutely no reason to go with Vista 32 (and in that case, I'd just stick with XP).  However, true 64bit support is worth it and some of the security features in Vista are really better than XP (especially with the signed drivers required by the 64-bit version).  Vista isn't completely fixed by any stretch of the imagination, but with SP1 they've fixed many of the major issues and it is stable and compatible enough for day-to-day use now.  That question is also related to the RAM question... If you got more than 3GB, I'd say that Vista 64 is certainly the way to go.

The major things holding me back from going Vista on my systems are:

1) I already have access to a site license for XP through work, so it is free and more importantly doesn't require activation nightmares.
2) The absurdly slow file copy bug in Vista (which, despite some initial reports is still not completely quashed in SP1).

However, if I was actually buying an OS, at this point (and this is a recent change on my part) it'd be Vista 64.

I was just planning on 2GB as I keep pushing the price of this machine up with extra bits (Q9400 & HD4850).  Thought I'd see how the 2GB went and then add another 2GB later if I felt it was needed.

I know more RAM helps performance (to a point), but given what this machine in actually doing I thought 2GB would probably be enough.

In terms of Vista 64 (or even Vista32 ) I have a couple of issues.

• I have limited time to spend trying resolve/fix issues with the system, plus it runs in the living room so I get lots of giref from the wife when things don't work at 5:30am when she wants to watch the news as she has breakfast (and I'm trying to sleep)!
• I have several USB-serial dongles and DVB-T tuners that I don't believe will have signed 64 bit drivers, or at least the USB-Serial things probably won't as they are cheap ones off ebay.

So unless there is a REALLY good reason to move to Vista (32/64) at this stage I'm probably safer staying with an OS I know well and know all my software/drivers work with.

I can always upgrade later if/when the urge or reason drives me

I would be interested in checking out the  Vista Media Center front end <cough> (sorry MC), but it's not worth the potential hassles just to check it out.

Cheers
Richard

[glynor]

I know more RAM helps performance (to a point), but given what this machine in actually doing I thought 2GB would probably be enough.

So unless there is a REALLY good reason to move to Vista (32/64) at this stage I'm probably safer staying with an OS I know well and know all my software/drivers work with.

I don't disagree with either of these things.  2GB should be fine for that use case for now, and if you are going with 2GB, the primary motivation to move to Vista 64 is eliminated.  I would not buy Vista 32 under any circumstances.  That's just silly.  I really wish that Microsoft had just gone 64-bit only for Vista, actually.  Or at least sold/marketed both as the same thing, so that if you had only a 32-bit capable CPU it would "automatically" install itself in 32-bit mode (but they would otherwise be identical, including the driver signing thing).  I think it would have moved the market more if they had.  They didn't because of Intel's Core 1 chips (Yonah), but I think that they should have ignored Intel's problems with the P4 at that time and just done it anyway.

[bwaldron]

I would not buy Vista 32 under any circumstances.

I'd agree with that. I also have a bunch of XP licenses that I continue to use on my homebuilt systems, but if I were to purchase a new OS, it would be Vista 64 at this point.