Duron/VIA/low budget CPU for playback advice?

[DaWolf]

For the kids I'm looking into getting a seperate machine for video playback (all formats except DVD although it would be a plus). I see a lot of low budget bare bone machines with Duron 800 MHz or VIA CPU's. How robust would these be at playback?

Reason I asked is that half a year ago I had to downgrade from an Athlon XP 1400 to a Celereon 1.7 GHz. I say downgrade as what my Athlon had no problem in handling my Celereon (390-something MB RAM, Windows XP) sk-ski-skips over. Audio is hard to get sync when the bitrate is high or when the audio is AC3: I have to use FFDshow to resize to 320x240 on the fly in order to watch most movies. Makes me kind of wonder about other cheap CPU's....

Any advice, insight, first hand experience more than welcome.

Ruud

[brashquido]

Wow, I've been using a Celeron 466 with 128MB of RAM running Windows 98 (desktop res of 800 x 600) as my HTPC. What videocard do you have? I use a 32MB GF2 MX and have only the very occasional stutter in DVD playback, no matter what audio stream is being played..

[DaWolf]

I have an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 AGP.

The playback issues are with any high resolution, high bitrate DivX/XviD. Some XCD XviD videos with OGG can't be resized on the fly by FFDShow and these I actually need to 'extract' and recode to a lower resolution.

The problems occur with WMP 6.4, Gabest's Classic Player, RealOne, WinDVD - you name it I've tried it.

Apart from resizing the video to 320x240 I've also found that just resampling the audio to a much lower bitrate does the trick but obviously resizing on the fly is easier.

Ruud

[pnl]

The VIA cpus are okay for DVD playback, but if you play a Divx movie, you'll be looking at a slideshow.

[brashquido]

Yeah, you need FPU powa, which these days means I'd say no less tha a P3 700, or Athlon 700. I used to use a Duron 800 which never had a problem playing DivX.

Anyway, back to the problem. Obviously the videocard is ok. Are you using AC '97 sound? They can sometimes put a real hit on CPU load. Other than that I'd say you'd either have to get a better CPU if you are going to use software to decode.

[DaWolf]

Indeed. I read about low-budget media dedicated PC's, mostly running Linux, but I have a hard time seeing them perform.

Ruud

[Generic]

Hey guys, I'm having a hard time trying to find out if a Via C3 1GHz CPU is capable of playing back DivX/MPEG-4 video. This is for an HTPC of course.. I've heard mixed reports but they've mostly been about the 800Mhz version (of which most people say there are no problems at the lowest quality DivX setting). If I buy a decent AGP card and quality sound card - do you think it would perform ok? Thanks for any comments!

Sorry for hijacking your thread, DaWolf :)

[mrlipring]

think about buying an athlon xp1700 (£40-ish, and 1.5v - low voltage) and underclocking it+using a silent fan or even just a good heatsink.

[Ramirez]

I'd stay away from any VIA CPUs; the company I work for sells a couple
of models of Elite Group notebooks/desktops based on it,
unbelievable crap!,pnl already said that, and I agree with every word.

@DaWolf
Why can't you get a dissent P4/Athlon processor and get it over with.
I mean those are fairly cheap these days, why it has to be a low end crap?

[mrlipring]

i assumed he was going for a low-end chip for its heat/noise level. that's why i said go athlon 1700xp and underclock.

what exactly are you reasons, generic? :confused:

[Generic]

Thanks chaps :)

Well, after looking around the net a little, I've been put right off the C3 1 Ghz chip. I'm going to go with something similar to what you suggested and underclock something like a P4 1.8 Ghz (I think they're lower power than the Athlon XP?). Although this makes it much more difficult for me :eek: Bah.

[mrlipring]

yeah, i think that's your best bet. going for a mid-rance chip, and underclocking.

i'd try and get a motherboard with no fan(s) on the motherboard too.

if you're going for a good gfx card without a fan, i'd think about an old geforce2mx, a lot of them didn't have fans, and the're good cards, with tv-out.

if you're going for a hard drive, you'll probably be wanting a 5400 (or even 4200) rpm drive, maybe with a silencing case, from quiet pc or something?

what plans do you have for your other hardware?

[DaWolf]

@ Ramirez:

Reason I was looking for what those low end machines could do is that here in Quebec (Canada) there is a considerable price difference. Things here cost substantially more than in the USA as we pay the original amount + taxes and over that amount we pay yet again tax.

But from what I've read here and elsewhere I do suspect spending that extra bit of money will be worth it.

Ruud

[Generic]

@mrlipring

Yeah thanks, I think that's the way to go. Will probably fit a large copper HS of some sort and a Panaflo fan at 5v or something.

The HTPC is going to run off a network using my own software so all media files are going to be stored remotely (I've tested streaming reliability, no problems). I only need a small disk for the local machine/client, a few GB would cover it. I had a look at those silent HDD cases, they're quite handy might grab one of those.

I actually have that GF2 MX with Tv-Out (no fan, large HS) and a Radeon 8500 with Tv-Out (with fan). I prefer to use the Radeon as the HTPC will be connected to a 1.85:1 Widescreen TV and the ATI drivers support auto video resizing for this kind of display.

For the case, any old piece of beige junk will do for now as it will be hidden in a large cabinet :D. For the sound, I'm not sure what to get. But I know I don't want to use any software on-board crap. And because of the network, I don't any CD/DVD drives either :)
Also, I already have a Remote Wonder controller, which is working quite nicely with my software at the moment.

You can see I'm quite new to this custom PC stuff, but it's a fairly simple system so I shouldn't get *too* stuck ;)

[Sirber]

Originally posted by DaWolf
@ Ramirez:

Reason I was looking for what those low end machines could do is that here in Quebec (Canada) there is a considerable price difference. Things here cost substantially more than in the USA as we pay the original amount + taxes and over that amount we pay yet again tax.

But from what I've read here and elsewhere I do suspect spending that extra bit of money will be worth it.

Ruud

It's not that expensive in Québec... You just have to choose from the right place.

http://www.shop-lci.com
http://www.microbytes.com/annon-f.htm

[mrlipring]

Originally posted by Generic
@mrlipring

Yeah thanks, I think that's the way to go. Will probably fit a large copper HS of some sort and a Panaflo fan at 5v or something.

The HTPC is going to run off a network using my own software so all media files are going to be stored remotely (I've tested streaming reliability, no problems). I only need a small disk for the local machine/client, a few GB would cover it. I had a look at those silent HDD cases, they're quite handy might grab one of those.

I actually have that GF2 MX with Tv-Out (no fan, large HS) and a Radeon 8500 with Tv-Out (with fan). I prefer to use the Radeon as the HTPC will be connected to a 1.85:1 Widescreen TV and the ATI drivers support auto video resizing for this kind of display.

For the case, any old piece of beige junk will do for now as it will be hidden in a large cabinet :D. For the sound, I'm not sure what to get. But I know I don't want to use any software on-board crap. And because of the network, I don't any CD/DVD drives either :)
Also, I already have a Remote Wonder controller, which is working quite nicely with my software at the moment.

You can see I'm quite new to this custom PC stuff, but it's a fairly simple system so I shouldn't get *too* stuck ;)

what kinda motherboard are you buying?

reason i was asking is that some motherboards allow booting from usb, and if you have a usb memory card reader, you MIGHT be able to boot off the memory card. that would be very sweet.

not sure if this is possible, but it'd make for a quieter pc again.

[Xayd]

Via's PCI instability will give you poor hard drive performance and poor sound quality (regardless of sound card).

I would recommend a 1ghz'ish Celeron and an I815 board.

If you're in the states, Mwave.com has Soyo I815 mobos for about 50 dollars and 1.1ghz Celerons for 40 dollars.

[mrlipring]

just realised that there are, of course, usb pen drive style things you should be able to boot from, and they're pretty cheap too.

[DaWolf]

@ Sirber: thanks for the URL's! Precisely what I was looking for as here in town .... well....

Ruud

[Sirber]

No problem :)

Warning: ShopLCI are slow to recieve/send hardware pieces.

[pnl]

If you haven't built your HTPC yet, take a look at the MSI 651. It looks pretty neat.

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=216