well, i guess it's time to ask.....

[Gary Kline]

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 09:01:56PM -0700, Charlie Kester wrote:
> On Wed 18 Aug 2010 at 20:16:51 PDT Depo Catcher wrote:
> >
> >On 8/18/2010 8:10 PM, Gary Kline wrote:
> >>'ve hesitated.   on my 3.0gh thinkpad, streams fly
> >>flawlessly.  So if i buy one of the notebooks with a
> >
> >Stream what kind of movies?  Some video players (like VLC) have 
> >hardware acceleration that will help a lot if your video card/driver 
> >supports it.
> >Things like Flash based movies might be kind of iffy though since 
> >they can't take advantage of the video hardware [?].  Once you start 
> >moving up to high def video you might have some problems, but know a 
> >lot of Home Theater guys that use Atoms for media centers:
> >http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=103
> >
> >My gfs Atom 330 plays videos in VLC fine and flash fine, but full 
> >screen flash drops frames.  This is under WinXP.
> >The new D510 CPU are faster in benchmarks; it has dual cores with
> >hyperthreading.  
> 
> But be aware that the Xorg intel driver in the current portstree does
> NOT support the graphics controller built into the D510 and other
> Pineview Atoms.  The vesa driver works, but doesn't take advantage of
> AGP or other graphics niftiness.
> 
> I have one of these myself, and can confirm that downloaded videos play
> acceptably well, despite using vesa.  I can't speak to streaming video
> performance, however, since I don't use Flash and usually don't watch
> online videos.
> 
> I've seen reviews of the D510 that say HD video performance is sub-par
> even on operating systems with drivers that fully support the graphics
> controller.
> 
> >If you wait a few months, the new D525 CPUs should be out in consumer
> >computers - these are 1.8Ghz (instead of 1.6Ghz) and support DDR3
> >(instead of DDR2).  That might help a bit.  Both are limited to 4 gigs.
> >
> >So, I would bet that 90% of the time it'll be enough if you have a 
> >good video card with good drivers.  I'm not an expert on them though, I
> >think they are neat though.
> 
> There are Atom-based systems available with Nvidia graphics.  Gary might
> want to consider one of those, although it probably won't be as dirt
> cheap or as low-wattage as a Pineview system.  (I have no experience
> with them myself.)


	jeez, and to think i was a =hardware= major.  hm.  is there a
	website than can explain the pros/cons?

	a friend is helping me move from 5 tower cases to two.  money is 
	always a concern, but saving watts is more important.

	gary

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-- 
 Gary Kline  kline at thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
    The 7.83a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php
                           http://journey.thought.org