[mhdebokx]

Last week my mac mini (early 2009) stopped working. At the moment I’m looking around which htpc should be the successor. Before making the decision I’d like to know how the video-stream is handled by XBMC/OSX.

For example I have a MKV container with a video-stream of 40Mbit. Like everybody the video should be shown without stuttering.

If the machine has more than 1 core, how is the decoding process the video stream ? Is it a single core process or a multi-threaded process. Eg. the mac mini with intel i5 (duo core) is slower than the intel I7 (quad core) if the run on the same speed ?

What is the impact of more internal memory for decoding the video stream ? Eg. gives 8GB less stuttering then 4GB ?

And last, what is the impact of the GPU in the decoding process, especially compared that the GPU is integrated in the CPU and use the same internal memory. For example what can we expect from the Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU.

At the moment I’m comparing the mac mini to a windows based htpc with Intel Core i3 (2100) with integrated Intel HD Graphics 2000

[calev]

I believe xbmc for osx can do hardware accelerated decode on any h.264 file (up to 1080P). For VC1 rips i think it does software decode. Unless that's changed in the past couple years. I think it only uses one core for software decode, But the I5 would be able to handle 1080p.

---

And 4 gigs is enough for just xbmc, but I run out of ram pretty quickly on my macbook pro with 4 gigs in mavirick, So i would go with 8 if you want to have anything else open. OSX is a ram hog.