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MacUsers · 2010-08-19, 14:14

Hi there,

I'm helping a friend to build a XBMC based HTPC and trying to keep things as minimum as possible but without having trouble running it. I'm thinking of a 3.40GHz Pentium D with 533Mz 2G memory and 32-bit XBMCbuntu - does it sound reasonable? As the video-decoding load has been taken off to the GPU, we don't really need a very power full CPU, do we?

Any comment/suggestion much appreciated. Cheers!!

prae5 · 2010-08-19, 14:35

As long as you have a nvidia card that supports vdpau you can use pretty much anything cpu wise. Thaat is way more than is needed, so will be fine.

MacUsers · 2010-08-19, 15:21

Thanks prae, for your comment. I'm gonna use ASUS P5N7A-VM with on board GeForce 9300, which supports VDPAU. cheers!!

Robgue · 2010-08-20, 01:46

I've got the same board and use a cheapo dual core celeron, E1200. Works great. I'd go with the cheapest available.

MacUsers · 2010-09-02, 10:35

What about a P4 with 1G nVidia 9400GT (ASUS EN9400GT) card? Just wondering if I can use that spare CPU (as it's almost 7 yrs. old) and save me from buying one. Cheers!!

MacUsers · 2010-09-06, 15:09

Sorry guys, for banging the door again. Does single core CPU really matter or the dual core is the thing to go with? I see a really cheap Celeron 430 but single core. The Max TDP is only 35W, which I'm really interested in, compare to the 65W to 75W for dual-core processors. Can any one please advise? Thanks again in advance. Cheers!!

prae5 · 2010-09-06, 15:11

Single core atom is fine as long as you are using hardware acceleration - should be fine with the celeron

MacUsers · (This post was last modified: 2010-09-06, 15:24 by MacUsers.)

You are an angel prae5; I'm very impressed to see that I'm saving money these days. Rofl

So, that's gonna be the spec:

ASUS P5Q-VM mainboard
Celeron 430 1.8 GHz (800MHz FSB)
1G ASUS EN9400GT graphics

hope I'm [very] good to go. Cheers!!

MacUsers · (This post was last modified: 2010-09-09, 13:14 by MacUsers.)

prae5 Wrote:Single core atom is fine as long as you are using hardware acceleration - should be fine with the celeron

So does it mean XBMC doesn't support multithreading, hence doesn't benefit anything at all from being on a dual-core? Cheers!!

MacUsers · 2010-09-10, 12:36

From the video playback info, it looks like XBMC does use the dual-core. I'm about to order a CPU; can anyone suggest if I should go for a dual-core or a single one? Cheers!!

**spiff** · 2010-09-10, 12:42

single core is fine. the whole point is that we do not decode using the cpu, it's the gpu doing the work.

xbmc runs 8-10 threads at any point so of course we "support" multi-core cpus as such, or rather, it's up to the os to run those threads on the most suited (i.e. least taxed) cores.