[gnrtool82]

Can we get a sticky up at the top that outlines the bare minimum of what you need for 1080p. It's getting old in threads "OMG. NO POWERS!" or people starting threads with "Hey, I'm building a new HTPC. It has a quad core i7 and 16GB of ram, you think this'll be enough". And it's always someone (on offense to you, you're certainly not the first) that has a join date of the month that they ask the question.

I run XBMC on 1GB of RAM and I even have around 3-400MB free at any given time. On a single core 1.8 gHz Celeron.

unfortunately, this hasn't happened yet.

and i'm going to fall right into this asking the same questions that are likely everywhere, but having performed a few forum searches, i haven't found it.

that said,

i, like a few before me, am looking at a 3610 refurb at 265$ vs a 3700 from newegg at $350

my main purpose will be xbmc, watching (either with my drobo plugged into it, or wireless stream, haven't thought much about it yet) blu ray/720p tv shows, mkv files.

i've read many reviews from amazon and other various sites that claim that there might be stutters (my guess is they did it straight from hulu, which certainly would be different than running it from xbmc through win 7).

so my questions are:
1- does the spdif support 5.1 surround sound properly?
2- would there be any real difference between the 3610 and 3700? the main differences, aside from refurb vs new, seem to be the 330 atom vs d525 and ddr2 vs ddr3 ram
3- can either machine do what i want it to do, watching 1080p comfortably, such as killa.sampla.x264
4- would either be able to handle any emulators? if so, which comfortably? i imagine both could handle n64, snes, nes.

thanks a lot

[Beer40oz]

I am going to stick with Windows & DXVA2...it works a treat on my main HTPC in my living room. If I have lots of problems with it, I may go with the Live version.



Thanks for the advice guys :-)

Buying it this week

feerlessleadr so DXVA2 works under windows 7 with an atom ion? I am planning to buy the AT5IONT-I mobo and use windows 7 instead of linux.

[Riffmaker]

feerlessleadr so DXVA2 works under windows 7 with an atom ion? I am planning to buy the AT5IONT-I mobo and use windows 7 instead of linux.

In the Dharma build is does. Won't on Camelot

[takapa]

In the Dharma build is does. Won't on Camelot

Agree with Riffmaker, Dharma on Windows 7 is very stable and plays everything with around 10-20% CPU utilization (GPU does the heavy lifting).

The 3610 is a flawless HTPC that I see no need to upgrade in the foreseeable future. The only thing it doesn't do is 3D playback and frankly, I don't care.

[feerlessleadr]

feerlessleadr so DXVA2 works under windows 7 with an atom ion? I am planning to buy the AT5IONT-I mobo and use windows 7 instead of linux.

as others have stated w7 and dxva2 work flawlessly. I have had zero problems playing full 1080p rips on my 3700.

[louisblack]

Strangely once I'd installed 10.10 I found a solution to this problem and now it works like a dream, so in a nutshell if you get the R3700 be prepared to do the following:

in the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file add the following line: blacklist rt2800pci before you do anything with auto updating. Also you have to add options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=0 probe_mask=0xffff,0xfff2 to this file /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf

I have noticed a speed increase in loading videos and also when installing programs but the main difference is that it now has wireless n so I can stream my HD movies to it from the server instead of having a few external drives attached.

Sorry, I don't quite understand. Will the modifications to the files you mentioned help with the wireless driver locking up the system during reboot/hibernate? I've just bought myself a R3700 and this issue is really frustrating me!