I have a home server using an Intel Pentium 2140 and an asus P5G-MX motherboard (although I'd assume there are better options today). This draws 40 watts from the wall, so I don't see the argument for an Atom until the improved chipset is available (sometime Q2?).

The relatively low power demand, even after power supply inefficiency, is caused by the power governor taking the clock speed down and no underclocking needs to be performed to get there - possibly more could be achieved if underclocking was undertaken, too, and a more efficient power supply would help.

I think, these days, a Pentium 5200 is a rather better option, as its about the same price as the lower performance Pentiums/Celerons and is potentiallly better performing.

The bigger question for me is Intel vs AMD. The Intel processors have the edge, but the AMD chipsets are pretty impressive, so that becomes a rather close decision.

Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H The board has a problem when the Sata bios mode is set to Raid (using only one hdd) as it must be for Ubuntu. It takes a reboot to get it to pick up the Raid in the bios. On first boot it blows past that and does not pick up the hdd (a Sata WD). Would still choose Gigabyte over Asus.

However if I were to choose again, I might go with a 780G over the 8200.

DanceMan

From your linked article.

Can you find the AMD Athlon 64 2000+? I THINK the reason the articles I was referring to were down clocking regular single cores was becuase the 2000+ is relatively scarce. With just a cursory look I could not find anybody with them in stock (just a quick look though).

Neither setup will handle 1080p because neither nVidia and ATI includes h.264 and MPEG-2 hardware decoding in Linux. Also the Linux community have not yet tempted to use OpenCL or a similar stream processor API to help aid in decoding video codecs using video cards. In order to process 1080p with out any dropped frames is you need a fast processor like an AMD Phenom II 945 or 955 BE. Could get a Phenom II 720 BE and over clock it to 3 GHz or faster. It is the same thing on the Intel side. Need a high clocked processor to handle 1080p like an Intel E8400. If you can find a hardware video codec decoding card that is supported in Linux, then you can use low power processors.

The Pandora project is a good example of a computer setup that could process 1080p and being very low power as possible.

A 1080i content will be twice as hard for a computer to process than 1080p. In order to process 1080i, the frames per second have to be twice as much. This is why it will require more computing power because the FPS will have to be 60 frames per second instead of 30. Also deinterlacing have to be done too. Not all deinterlacing algorithms uses SIMD to help in processing, so a fast processor is needed. To make things even worst the h.264 has not yet been rewritten to use multithreading. If h.264 codec is multi-threaded, a multi-processor system can efficiently be used. Since 2004, Linux has gotten good performance with DVD with out the help of hardware decoding cards. Now that HD came in, Linux is lacking in this area.

All the core API for helping the main processor to decode h.264 creates headaches. What video card manufacture you are using for your graphics have to also be supported by the media player. nVidia's VDAPAU and ATI's UVD have to both be supported by the desire media player in order to get the benefits. Adding support for either of these to a media player like Mplayer is not easy. It will take a while to make sure they are reliable and easy enough to use. A lot of people are eye candy addicts from what I am reading from the Internet, so turning off Composite can turn some happy faces to unhappy faces. IMHO, using the fastest main processor is the best way to go at this time.

Both Intel and AMD are equal on total power consumption. I suggest spend your time researching which wattage of the power supply is the most efficient at the power consumption of the computer and with out skipping out quality of the power supply.

AMD has finally caught up with Intel's processors, so the performance is irrelevant. At this time AMD provides better price advantage compared to Intel.

Electro

You are a little behind the times, both Nvidia and Ati have hardware decoding support in Linux now(h.264, MPEG-2, and most others). While the Ati project did spur Nvidia into action, it has (more or less) been stalled since last November. Yes, any application used must support the hardware decoding(just like any other feature) and most of the common ones already do have variants that do (Mplayer, Mythtv, etc.). I would expect that most of the video players will have incorporated support for these APIs by next fall in there "standard" versions.

So what that I am little behind the times. There is a catch using VDPAU or UVD with programs like Mplayer. You have to download the SVN branch of Mplayer which is experimental. Setting up to compile a SVN branch on some distributions take more work than the past. Also some distributions place files in certain places, so compiling programs may break the setup. The same goes for other media players.

I doubt it will be in stable release by August or as late as Novemeber. It will most likely be out next year. The VDPAU has some problems, so it is not yet reliable. Unfortunately, ATI users still have to resort to buying the fastest processors until ATI brings in UVD. Also ATI users using open source drivers will have to wait even longer.

I would just find a cheap A64, no matter what the name. The Semprons are just rebranded A64's and many have the same L2 cache, etc. If the motherboard bios gives you control of undervolting and underclocking, you can make any A64 into a low power server cpu. That said, there is a single core Sempron I've seen mentioned fairly often at SPCR (Silent PC Review) that shouldn't be hard to find. AMD has made so many variations I can't keep them all straight. My second hand X2 3800+, for example, when I researched it, could have been any of about four or more different cores.

Why not get an Intel Mini Mac? I have an older PPC mini as my multimedia center connected to my 37" HDTV. I use the mini to rip movies and install mp3s on it. I also use wireless keyboard & mouse so I can sit back in my easy chair and surf the net, watch movies and/or play music.

http://www.twincities.com/ci_1221137...k=1?sr=hotnews

For rpm based systems, you can just pull the spec file from the source rpm of the app(like Mplayer) and that takes care of file locations and distro specific (for the app not VDPAU) patches. I have done it on Centos5.X and F8-F10 without any real issues. I do not use ATI but from the guys I know that do, there is not much of an issue to using their solution either. While I did see some issues with the .29 drivers (tearing) the .40 and later drivers seem fine (.55 current?). Most of the post .40 fixes were more about handling specific brands of graphics cards. Some of the companies have apparently handled some parts of their cards design in a non-standard or unexpected manner(the actual card manufacturer not the chipset manufacturer). They have also been adding more support for the variants of the x.264 codec.

DanceMan

Again from(above) the article you linked to. This is why the articles I was talking about said that the under clocking limit(for the non 2000+ cpus) was at about 50W(to maintain stability). The bang per Watt is better, but the overall Watts consumed is still higher.

SPCR measured an HP box with an X2 cpu at about 50 watts total at idle. AMD supplied otherwise identical AMD and Intel boxes for reviews.

DanceMan

Exactly, 50 watts at IDLE vs 44 at 100% load(or 40 watts at idle).