Kodi Community Forum

Well the choices are the

i3-2100t - Weakest of the bunch but also is a 35W chip. If everything is needed on this might as well use less power and less heat.
i3-2100 - Pretty much what I wanted since it first came out
i3-2105 - Is the extra boost in GPU needed?
A8-3850 - Does XBMC use all 4 cores? And if the GPU is needed has a much beefier one than the i3-2105. Also it shouldn't have the problems that i3 have with frame rate.

or should I wait a while for the A8-3800 because it is supposed to be a 65W chip which is less than the 100W chip that the A8-3850 is and supports AMDs version of Turbo.

or can I go even lower than the i3s and get a G620T though I kind of want the piece of mind that I got atleast an i3 because the price difference between those 2 don't worry me too much.

This is for playing decently high bitrate 1080p videos running on the Windows platform.

I am also not in a hurry so I don't care much for the wait on the A8-3800 or even Ivy Bridge assuming they fix the frame rate issue.

I am not really planning on buying a GPU since that would add to the heat and power consumption and make airflow less efficient as this is for a tiny HTPC purpose case.



On a side note: I am looking at the Centon CableCard PCI Tuner which supports up to 4 streams. When is support for Live TV going to be put into XBMC especially with the recording and live pausing and such because that with the Ceton would make a sweet HTPC and allow me to get rid of my 15 a month DVR. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6815706001

I had a similar dilemma (2100T vs 2100) for my new server and finally chose the 2100. The difference in power consumption is so small in idle/low usage state (where the pc will be most of its time) so there are not many reasons to chose the T version. Plus the T is more expensive. In an Intel DH61BE board, a Hauppage pci dual TV tuner, an ssd drive and 1 fan, I measured 27watts (AC) idle power consumption with a bronze PSU Seasonic TFX300 (I need the extra power for an extra sata card and 10 drives but in a htpc you can easily go for a picoPSU).
Can't tell you much about the graphics though, as I run linux and there are not very good drivers for the Intel graphics. In Windows might be better.
CPU comparison here:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/intel-2100t-2400s

XBMC doesn't have PVR in the release until late 2012 I think. There's some PVR work being done now, but I wouldn't call it stable (works well enough, but be careful where you deploy it). Pay more attention to which backend supports that capture card than anything else. I don't think XBMC will support DVR natively, it's going to be done through one of many backends so that's what will really need to support your hardware.

I've already made the leap to getting rid of cable/DVR. One of the best decisions I ever made.

Can't help on the CPU front, I'm an AMD guy mostly