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Hey there, I'm working on putting together my first HTPC box, and I'd prefer to use linux as the OS. I've already got a linux based server in my home that I'm going to use as a small NAS (2Tb) along with it, so the HTPC itself has "minimal" needs.

I'm wanting to play full 1080P and full HD audio streaming from my NAS (I'll just mount the drives over the network). I'd /like/ to include a remote control for power function as well as control. I definitely want it to be quiet.

That said, I'm looking at the AMD A6-3500 as the main chip / graphics chip and something like this mobo:
http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Socket-Mini...436&sr=8-1

I was hoping someone could jump in here and let me know if that's enough to get what I want (high quality video and audio decoding / streaming over a network), and especially if someone has run a linux build with this chip. The mobo isn't as important ... just one of the few with CIR (which I don't even know how well that works with linux).

I'm going to throw in some basic RAM (2Gb or 4Gb depending on prices) and a small SSD, and that should be about it for the box. Hopefully low heat with some silent fans and a small form factor.

I just don't want to throw $350 or so at it to find out it doesn't do smooth video or doesn't work well with linux (or openelec, which I'd like to try out as well).
Linux? Nividia.

I have 1080p running just fine on a 1.8 gHz celeron that scored around a 450 on the cpu benchmarks with a GT220 and 1GB of RAM.
darkscout Wrote:Linux? Nividia.

I have 1080p running just fine on a 1.8 gHz celeron that scored around a 450 on the cpu benchmarks with a GT220 and 1GB of RAM.

Thanks for the response.

I agree ... Nvidia has been my card of choice for all my linux boxes. I wondered if I could get away with a lower powered A6, but I'm definitely open to an intel / nvidia combo.

So some questions: The 220 is enough to handle everything? Full 1080P, even on high graphics content movies? If so, I know there's quite a few 220's that are fanless, so that might be a good way to go (even if I attach a low powered fan ... the fact that it doesn't have a huge amount of heat to disperse is a plus).

Secondly, you found a single core 1.8 enough to run linux (what flavor?) with XBMC and skinning?
ATI now has great support with the Xvba branch. No need to waste additional watts for an extra gfx card anymore.
wsnipex Wrote:ATI now has great support with the Xvba branch. No need to waste additional watts for an extra gfx card anymore.

Be that as it may, has anyone (you?) used this chipset and gotten good results ... ie: really smooth 1080p playback and decoding? I'd love to save the cash and watts, but not just to find out an A6 embedded chip doesn't work very well or causes movies to skip under high load.
everything from ati hd 3xxx series and up provides very smooth 1080p playback with Xvba.
wsnipex Wrote:everything from ati hd 3xxx series and up provides very smooth 1080p playback with Xvba.

What are you running, then? Is someone out there actively on linux running an A6-3500 (or so) that can get 1080P smooth playback inside XBMC? And with that, do you also get HD audio? And again ... what is the overall heat or watt usage by the system to do so? AMD tends to run hotter, but with a lower power chip, could still be much cooler than a separate GPU.

I have a buddy who has a 1.8GHz hyperthreaded CPU (just a P4, I think) with an older Nvidia 220 running Ubuntu 10.04. He was able to load up XBMC on that and play a 1080P mkv file very smoothly, which is great! Those are cheap components (and the 220 has fanless options). The 220 also does HDCP and HD Audio ... though I've heard the support for HD audio in linux in general is limited.

So my fallback system is definitely on the order of a Celeron 440 or low dual core with a GeForce 220. Together those would cost similar to the A6 and the chip, by itself, would be lower TDP (though with the graphics card, it's slightly higher ... 65 vs about 85 combined).

Unless I'm mistaken, both systems seem fairly comparable (cost, TDP, power consumption, etc), but Nvidia has a much better history with linux.
I'm running ati HD4250 integrated(onboard gfx), but we have lots of users running fusion(E-350), which is a lot less powerful then the A6-3500

take a look here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=116996
Hi,

I use a GT430 silent (NVidia) which seems to be atm the "most powerful" gfx card without active cooling and comes around 60 € .. even if cards like Geforce 210 are much cheaper (30 €Wink I like to have some power reserve for future tasks.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

Nvidias cards are painless with linux.

As CPU I took a nice Intel G530, supported by 4 GB of RAM .. if you use a Scythe Shuriken Rev. B as CPU Cooler and a BeQuit power supply you won't hear your machine ...

So long

LastCoder
AndyMac Wrote:Be that as it may, has anyone (you?) used this chipset and gotten good results ... ie: really smooth 1080p playback and decoding? I'd love to save the cash and watts, but not just to find out an A6 embedded chip doesn't work very well or causes movies to skip under high load.

Phenom II X4 here, AMD HD6950, works like a treat with XvBA. It's my desktop, hence the beefy stuff. I ordered a Zotac Nano AD10 (with Zacate E-350) to replace my 1st generation AppleTV (which runs Linux, and Xbmc, with a Broadcom CrystalHD card, but is severely underpowered for 1080p - the CrystalHD card means it can decode 1080p just fine but it's a very close call with the weak CPU.).
Again, thanks for all the replies.

To be clear, I'm not worried about AMD chips in general. I've had an AMD tower before, and had no problems with linux.

What I'm worried about with something like the A6 is not the lack of CPU power, it's the integrated graphics, and the compatibility of not only ATI with linux, but of that style of cpu-integrated graphics chip with linux.

I fully realize there are plenty of folks who will run an AMD and ATI as separate cards / chips, but how many are running the A6 as their only graphics card? And for those, do they get flawless 1080P playback / decoding while streaming from NAS or network, and do they get full HD (5.1) audio?

The links provided suggest that the audio may be an issue, and many, many people are responding with artifacts, tearing, pausing, sleep, etc. It seems like there's a lot of good work going on there, but it's perhaps not "stable" yet for everyone.

It's a tempting solution, since the chip itself is only 65W and you'd have both your graphics and your cpu finished, but I think, seeing the responses on this thread and the ones linked, an Nvidia (like a 430) paired with a celeron seems much safer to get 1080P flawlessly, even if the heat might be slightly higher (about 85W), and that way I get both a dual core and a 430 chipset which is known to work very, very well.

So truly thanks for all the input ... it's helped me get a much better picture, but I think I'm going to shy away from the A6 / A8 chipset for linux / XBMC for the time being.
I'm quite sure AMD and Intel have built their chips in such a way that the OS does not know the GPU is on-die. After all, all that matters to the OS is that there is a GPU. It doesn't matter whether it's on-die, part of the chipset, or as a separate add-in card in a VGA/PCI-E slot.

So it should not matter.
.:B:. Wrote:I'm quite sure AMD and Intel have built their chips in such a way that the OS does not know the GPU is on-die. After all, all that matters to the OS is that there is a GPU. It doesn't matter whether it's on-die, part of the chipset, or as a separate add-in card in a VGA/PCI-E slot.

So it should not matter.

That may be entirely true, but from the forums linked here and elsewhere, compatibility still seems to be a general issue. That may be more of an ATI thing than an AMD/ATI thing, but it's still there.

On top of that, another user brought up the point that with the graphics chip on-die, you basically had the one chip running hot all the time, either doing graphics, crunching on processes, or both. That meant he was always running higher fan speeds. With only 65W TDP, you still might not need a big fan, but he found a lower power CPU with an external graphics card was quieter (I'm guessing doubly so if I get a fanless graphics card).

Either way, you end up with about the same amount of case fans ... 65W vs 80W is not a huge difference as far as air you have to move through the case, but it could be a pretty big difference in 65 vs 50/30 that you have to move off of a single chip (vs off two chips at 50/30). Doubly so when the 65 might sit regularly near the max, while the other two might run much cooler than their max since they're under-utilized.
AndyMac Wrote:Secondly, you found a single core 1.8 enough to run linux (what flavor?) with XBMC and skinning?

XBMC originally ran on a 700 MHz P3. It's handled everything I've thrown at it. Occasionally hiccups when it's generating a dds. But once they're made no problem. 1GB of Ram and I almost always have at least 512 free if not more.

The GT220 has played even the highest bitrate h.264 BR rip that I threw at it without a problem.

Just running a basic Debian install with XBMC compiled from source.

Maybe it's improved but last time I tried XVba it got all crashy when trying to play anything.
darkscout Wrote:XBMC originally ran on a 700 MHz P3. It's handled everything I've thrown at it. Occasionally hiccups when it's generating a dds. But once they're made no problem. 1GB of Ram and I almost always have at least 512 free if not more.

The GT220 has played even the highest bitrate h.264 BR rip that I threw at it without a problem.

Just running a basic Debian install with XBMC compiled from source.

Maybe it's improved but last time I tried XVba it got all crashy when trying to play anything.

Yeah, I'm hearing a lot of people try to steer me away from XVba. It looks like there's been a lot of good work going on there, but I don't want to dedicate $400 of resources on a special purpose box to something that's a little too much on the edge or beta.

And sorry, I wasn't meaning to imply in general that linux wouldn't run on a 1.8 or anything like that. I'm currently running minix on a 386 laptop (kind of awesome). I just wasn't sure how well XBMC would run on /top/ of some flavors of linux, since some (Ubuntu included) tend to be a little more cpu intensive than others, so I was curious what he was running as his OS choice.

For the last two years, I've favored Ubuntu for being fairly up to date and still providing some cool user experience (like Compiz) even though it can be flaky, but it is definitely heavier. I'll have to take a good look at Debian again for this box. I like Fedora as well, but I've already got two Ubuntu PC's in the house, so I'll probably stay debian-based just to keep things simple Wink.

I'm leaning heavily to a low power dual core celeron now (1.8 or 2.0 or so offer 30W options) with a GT 430. That should pretty easily crush anything I want to do with it and they're still cheap as well while providing some upgrade options (socket 1155 and PCIE2 or 3) in case I want to change things going forward. I don't think I'll find a CIR option, but who knows, they might be out there Smile.
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