[fritsch]

@dougie Fresh: I have seen that. It's not about budget. I run a Celeron 1820T in little case, which does everything perfectly. I just await (since some years) a cheap, well powered system, that can fullfil my use cases. The Celeron 2955U with its hsw gpu looks good in that direction. Some of my team colleagues bought the Brix 2955U - curious what my tests will reveal.

Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55728161/htpc.zip

[-DDD-]

Yes - that I said. The 3225 has 16 EUs on its HD4000, that's enough power for Lanczos 3 Optimized.

Real: HD 4000: 16 EU
HD 4000 Baytrail: 4 EU <- that sucks, even the GPU in the Celeron 847 is better.
HD 2500: 6 EU
HD 3000: 12 EU
HD 2000: 6 EU

Source: wikipedia + http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Betting-O...ed/?page=2 <- for the baytrail and yeah my personal measurments make that clear, too.

Then you mean

Though i don't like the IVB on Baytrail graphics, as it's even too slow for Lanczos 3.

and not the whole IVB Graphics like you said:

The Baytrail GPU isn't a HD4000, it's called HD Graphics only.
The Celeron 847 have 6 EU, maybe thats enough for Lanczos3, and the 4 EU are not.
Then all Baytrail would be a bad deal, and everything with 6EU and more would be a good one.

Here is also a good Overview for Intel GPU:
http://www.notebookcheck.com/Intel-HD-Gr...975.0.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_...sing_units

[fritsch]

Celeron 847 cannot do Lanczos, Celeron 1007U also can't. HD3000 can do - so i am really curious on the 2955U. The quote must be read in context with my first sentence, where I describe the Baytrail IVB.

I think 10 EUs are fine for Lanczos 3 - will tell you tonight.

[fritsch]

And btw. to get back to xbmc: There is absolutely no need to upscale e.g. 1900x800 to 1920x1080 via Lanczos 3. Here Bilinear / Nearest neighbour is perfectly fine. This is handled by the setting: "Use HQ Scaler when scaling > xx per cent". Here I suggest a value of 20 on capable hardware of course.

[noggin]

Most of the things fristch is using though the average XBMC user isn't using. You'll be fine with a J1900 if you just want to watch videos. If you want to use more upscalers though then yes you'd need a better GPU.
Edit: Any good RECENT guide on upscalers? I never have boethered with it, but I have a 4770k and a HD7950. Tons of extra processing power just sitting idle. I just never noticed a difference with upscalers but I have glasses now but before I go through the trouble I'm trying to find decent comparisons. Never have been able to find what I want went googling.

I watch a mis of 576i (a lot of it originated 1080p and downscaled) and 1080i/p content on my XBMC box, and am viewing on a 40" Sony HDTV (no motion processing, and pretty much all the digital processing switched off, and the artificial sharpening introduced by the Sharpness control is reduced to 0)

Nearest Neighbour is the worst scaling algorithm. It basically looks like it just upscales by making square pixels into bigger square pixels. No interpolation or filtering, and not treating the source video as gaussian samples rather than square blocks.
Bilinear is a little better.

Once you get above these, the results are improved, but in some cases I detect some artefacts being introduced as well.

If you have a Full HD 1920x1080 display, and watch mainly 1080i/1080p content, then upscaling is irrelevant. And to be honest if you watch 720p content on a 1080p display, the chances are the differences in scaling will be less obvious.

If however you watch stuff lower resolution than 720p on a 1080p display (such as SD DVDs, SD Live TV etc.), then upscaling is really pretty significant in quality terms. Particularly if the sources are good quality SD.

De-interlacing is also a pretty key factor if you watch non-progressive sources (like Live TV or DVDs of native interlaced content)

[fritsch]

+1

[-DDD-]

Celeron 847 cannot do Lanczos, Celeron 1007U also can't. HD3000 can do - so i am really curious on the 2955U. The quote must be read in context with my first sentence, where I describe the Baytrail IVB.

I think 10 EUs are fine for Lanczos 3 - will tell you tonight.

So it would be like:
HD3000 - 12 EU - 1350 MHz - Good for Lanczos3
2955U - 10 EU - 1000MHz - ?!
1007U - 6 EU - 1100MHz - Bad for Lanczos3

Then Core i3-32x0 with 6 EU would also be bad and i made a good Choice when buy my HTPC with the i3-3225

[fritsch]

Yes - the i3 3225 has a HD4000 which made it so perfect.

All the others are fine if you don't need high quality scaling, though. So check your needs prior to buying anything.

[Aquarius]

Build me a Celeron 2955U in mini itx format and I will buy it :-)

This.
I've waited for this for too long, gave up, and went bay-trail-D instead. Don't regret it. Idealy, I would have hoped for a 4010U or a 4200U in mini-itx. but the only ones like this are too expensive and difficult to get on the consumer market.

[Dougie Fresh]

@dougie Fresh: I have seen that. It's not about budget. I run a Celeron 1820T in little case, which does everything perfectly. I just await (since some years) a cheap, well powered system, that can fullfil my use cases. The Celeron 2955U with its hsw gpu looks good in that direction. Some of my team colleagues bought the Brix 2955U - curious what my tests will reveal.

Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55728161/htpc.zip

I am waiting too. It seems to get closer and closer. A 29xxU with a 12-19V input, mSATA and either passive or a quiet, easily controlled fan would really make my day. I have so many super-small, nice mini-ITX cases it would be perfect for. Right now the C1037U motherboards come close but still the only thing with all those features is an older D2550 motherboard with built-in GT610 and a i3-3217U motherboard with HD4000.

ASRock Q1900DC-ITX will be nice if it becomes available.

[pszab]

Why do you want DC-in motherboard? All of your cases have AC adapter inside.

[Dougie Fresh]

Why do you want DC-in motherboard? All of your cases have AC adapter inside.

Not all of them. These do not and therefore they can be smaller than the e-mini cases:

http://www.ecosmartpc.com/sh55.html
http://www.ecosmartpc.com/s197h80.html

---

This might be a nice alternative (again, if it's ever actually available):





A4-5000 quad-core processor, HD8210 GPU and fanless.

[Edit] The Biostar page likely has a typo with the GPU since the AMD A4-5000 comes with HD8330.

[tential]

Most of the things fristch is using though the average XBMC user isn't using. You'll be fine with a J1900 if you just want to watch videos. If you want to use more upscalers though then yes you'd need a better GPU.
Edit: Any good RECENT guide on upscalers? I never have boethered with it, but I have a 4770k and a HD7950. Tons of extra processing power just sitting idle. I just never noticed a difference with upscalers but I have glasses now but before I go through the trouble I'm trying to find decent comparisons. Never have been able to find what I want went googling.

I watch a mis of 576i (a lot of it originated 1080p and downscaled) and 1080i/p content on my XBMC box, and am viewing on a 40" Sony HDTV (no motion processing, and pretty much all the digital processing switched off, and the artificial sharpening introduced by the Sharpness control is reduced to 0)

Nearest Neighbour is the worst scaling algorithm. It basically looks like it just upscales by making square pixels into bigger square pixels. No interpolation or filtering, and not treating the source video as gaussian samples rather than square blocks.
Bilinear is a little better.

Once you get above these, the results are improved, but in some cases I detect some artefacts being introduced as well.

If you have a Full HD 1920x1080 display, and watch mainly 1080i/1080p content, then upscaling is irrelevant. And to be honest if you watch 720p content on a 1080p display, the chances are the differences in scaling will be less obvious.

If however you watch stuff lower resolution than 720p on a 1080p display (such as SD DVDs, SD Live TV etc.), then upscaling is really pretty significant in quality terms. Particularly if the sources are good quality SD.

De-interlacing is also a pretty key factor if you watch non-progressive sources (like Live TV or DVDs of native interlaced content)

My biggest issue has been finding screenshots to show the difference between bilinear and other upscalers. ESPECIALLY RECENT screenshots. I usually find MadVR screenshots from when it was first introduced. The screenshots are so old. I keep trying to find a decent comparison of upscalers so I can decide which I'd like to try first or if it's even worth it.

I watch mostly 720p/1080p but I have a LARGE amount of SD content as well. The Wire, The Sopranos were never released on BluRay for example.

If someone could point me to a comparison thread of sorts that'd be great. I just can't seem to find one on google no matter what I search.

[pszab]

Why do you want DC-in motherboard? All of your cases have AC adapter inside.

Not all of them. These do not and therefore they can be smaller than the e-mini cases:

http://www.ecosmartpc.com/sh55.html
http://www.ecosmartpc.com/s197h80.html

---

This might be a nice alternative (again, if it's ever actually available):

A4-5000 quad-core processor, HD8210 GPU and fanless.

I see, if not have it's ok.
Btw, I've seen this motherboard, but I don't know whether HD8210 is the same as HD84xx (in Athlon Kabinis) in htpc point of view (3D, 4K, etc). Or not..
don't know what is the difference.. but a promising board.

[Raudi]

I have a HP chromebook 14 with the 2955U and XBMC running in a chroot and a J1800 board running ArchLinux. The Asrock J1900 ITX is also on it's way to me and will also run ArchLinux. So if you want me to run some tests, please provide me with the material and test instructions.