Low-power HTPC etc

[Oliver Fromme]

Juergen Lock wrote:
 > Oliver Fromme wrote:
 > > Well, the Atom N330 has a TDP of only 8 W, which isn't
 > > that bad for a 1.6 GHz 64bit 4-way processor (2 cores +
 > > hyperthreading).
 > > 
 > > Of course, ARM processors may certainly have even better
 > > performance/watt ratio.  But I think I stay with i386-
 > > compatible hardware for my particular case.
 > 
 > Btw there's also the Celeron SU2300 which has a TDP of 10 W and is
 > about twice as fast as the N330 Atom as you can see e.g. here:
 > 
 >    http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

Interesting page.  But I think that the benchmarks need to
be taken with a grain of salt.  For example, the SU2300
seems to be twice as fast only in the single-threaded
benchmarks.  In the multi-threaded benchmarks, the SU2300
is only a little faster (10 - 20 percent).

The Atom will be more than enough for me.  There are several
fanless (!) mainboards with a dual-core Atom (330 or D525)
that have the ION chipset with full-HD MPEG acceleration
via VDPAU.  I'll probably combine that with an SSD in order
to get a completely silent system without any moving parts.

Best regards
   Oliver

PS:  I'm not interestd in VDR at all, I don't want to record
anything.  Also, I don't have DVB-anything.  In my case, the
box will be purely for playing media and for web surfing.


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"... there are two ways of constructing a software design:  One way
is to make it so simple that there are _obviously_ no deficiencies and
the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no _obvious_
deficiencies."        -- C.A.R. Hoare, ACM Turing Award Lecture, 1980