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If you plan on using a dedicated GPU then anything over a sandy bridge Pentium is overkill IMO. With a SSD even the G530-550 is probably enough. I don't even think you need a dedicated GPU. The iGPU's from AMD and intel are fine for HD playback. Although for 3D you'll need HD 4000 which I believe is only on i3 and up.
If I were you I'd get an Ivy bridge Celeron or Pentium. You'd have to look at the price difference but one of the best GPUs for htpc is the GT640M. How that + a Celeron compares to an i3 with HD 4000 I'm not sure. I don't care for 3D so HD2000/2500 meets my needs fine.
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well it seems like you dont need that much of a GPU ($50-$100) to drive blu ray and 3d blu ray so i'm leaning towards an i3 or celeron and something like that gt640 you mentioned. I guess i'm just wondering what would be best for playback a nice CPU or nice GPU.
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For simplicity, power consumption, heat and noise I would go with an i3 w/ HD 4000 graphics over CPU + GPU. Since you apparently budgeted for an i5, if you find the playback performance isn't what you like you can then buy a graphics card. If you poke around the forum you'll see a lot of folks running set ups with the G530 Celeron and G620 Pentium. The iGPU is more than capable of playing back full 1080P blu ray rips and even ISO's without issue. I would imagine HD 4000 is much the same, but with 3D capability.
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2013-03-20, 16:04
(This post was last modified: 2013-03-20, 16:09 by Busenheimer.)
That would be a sweet system. That is a very nice board. You could probably spend 1/2 that on a decent 1155 socket board with HDMI, but yes that combo would definitely get the job done.
Also if you are just doing xbmc playback you may want to check out the i3 NUC with hd4000. It's 299 on amazon. Add a mSATA drive and some ram. It is pretty quick. Has dual HDMI 1.4, USB, and inboard gigabit Ethernet.
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For 3D, you need at least a desktop i3. 3D is not supported in desktop Celeron/Pentium.
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Silverstone looks more like a piece of AV gear IMO... Looks good. More $ though.
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This thread got me thinking.
Is there any quality or performance difference when say using my G860 with or without my 6450 when bitstreaming HD audio and watching 1080p content?
XBMC specs: MINIX U9-H LibreELEC 4K all day
Home Theater - Samsung 65KS8000 - Denon 3200- Ascend Acoustics speakers - Maelstrom 18in sealed sub 7cu ft - Behringer EP2500
UNraid Server – Pentium G3258 – MSI - H81M-P33 – Antec HCG-400M PS - 8Gb RAM